Green Eyes Plays Dressup
by blackberet
Summary: During the standoff between the Youth League and New Yevon, one group remained neutral: the Machine Faction. But what was really going on behind their operations in Bikanel?
1. First Steps

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Happy new year. You've stumbled onto the beginning of the third and final volume of the Green Eyes trilogy. Again, I've tried to provide as much backstory as possible without getting tedious, but if you're really interested it might help to read "Hey, Green Eyes" and "Green Eyes in Overdrive."  
  
If you're not familiar with Linna yet...hey, no sweat. You will be. *evil laugh* Our story begins about a week before the beginning of Final Fantasy X-2--i.e., two years after the end of X.  
  
Enjoy, everyone.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 1: First Steps  
  
**********  
  
Up until about ten minutes earlier, I was under the impression that there were no such things as different shades of black. Yeah. I thought that until I cracked my grill open and saw the interesting colors my carefully-planned dinner was turning as it burned to a nasty diseased little crisp.  
  
"Cred, my prawns!" I moaned, aiming a Nap Shot 3-quality kick at the grill stand and knocking it into the nearby pool of water. This is bad for the environment, but try telling that to an angry Al Bhed blitzer who's just screwed up Calm Day dinner. Besides, the water's so clean in Besaid that no one really cares about a little charcoal and several badly-cooked fragments of seafood anyway. I hoped.  
  
Calm Day: the anniversary of the day High Summoner Yuna defeated Sin and brought the Eternal Calm--this would be exactly two years before the day I spent ruining perfectly good entrees in Besaid. Besaid: cute little isle in southern Spira where I was spending five days of my work week during the blitz season. And that angry Al Bhed blitzer? Yeah, that would be me.  
  
"Linnnnnniiiiiie! What's that hissing noise?!" And that would be my darling younger sibling Naaga, who I still referred to as "my kid sister" despite the fact that she was eighteen and an entire quarter inch shorter than I was. My real name happens to be Linna, by the way. Don't let 'Linnie' and 'Cap'n LinLin' get to you. I did, until I realized that my chances of stopping them were roughly the same as the chances of anyone getting the Besaid Aurochs to actually win a game before Tidus showed up three years ago.  
  
Tysh, I missed that guy.  
  
Anyway, we were talking about me. Until about two and a half years before this, I'd been a street rat--blitz slang for an amateur blitzer who plays informally with anyone--back Home. Our parents had been killed by Sin when I was ten (my mother, Amirel, had been pretty famous herself as a forward for the Al Bhed Psyches, not to mention as a heavy drinker), and for the next decade Naaga and I pretty much took care of ourselves. A few months before the Calm, I'd joined the Besaid Aurochs as a pinch forward for the Yevon Cup tournament (don't ask how this happened; it's a long story involving a kidnapping plot and a lot of cold weather) and I'd ended up staying. Now, I was twenty-two years old and co-captain of the Aurochs.  
  
"Nothing!" I called back, lying through my teeth. The hissing sound was the steam rising rapidly from the grill as the fire went out. A couple of seriously hardcore catfish nibbled on the jet black catch of the day floating out, then wisely decided that to eat any more would be to take their lives in their fins and moseyed the hell on out of there.  
  
"Well, you better hurry your nothing up already. That stupid gorgeous boyfriend of yours is gonna be here in half an hour and there's not gonna be any domestic bliss around here if someone doesn't come up with something to eat," Naaga called back. She was standing inside my hut in Besaid Village, a place whose name is the ultimate in hyperbole for any location that consists of about eight wooden houses and a temple.  
  
I muttered a couple of choice words about little bimbos who are perfectly fine with hanging around during Calm Day dinner hitting on other people's well-muscled significant others but who couldn't cook prawns if their lives depended on it when it occured to me that: a) I couldn't cook prawns either, b) she was probably doing more of the cooking than I was, and c) If I provoked her, she would probably leave and go find some of my teammates to hit on, and I would be stuck trying to salvage a main course on my own. There are no pizza delivery services on the isle of Besaid. I would be royally screwed. I kept my mouth shut and dragged the grill out of the water. "Got everything under control out here, sis."  
  
"Linnie, quit lying. I already know you messed the whole thing up. That's why your job is the laundry and my job is cooking." Naaga leaned out the window, nearly blinding me with the full force of her several feet of unruly blonde ponytail. "Oh, man, is this some new kind of prawns flambe thing you're doing out here? Remember what happened the last time you tried to set food on fire?"  
  
"Oh, yeah, Miss Organic-Health-Food-Nut-Until-She-Burns-Her-Own-Damn-Cooking-And-Sheepishly-Asks-Her-Big-Sister-If-They-Can-Order-Pizza, like you could grill a prawn."  
  
"Something tells me you will not be adverse to a little potluck?" someone suggested from the doorway. I walked around the side of the hut, jumping carefully over the still-sizzling pool, and got to Rin at about the same time Naaga did.  
  
Everyone knows Rin. He's THE Rin, the Al Bhed travel agency mogul, former blitzer, and sometime gamer. He's also the guy who (sorta) raised me and Naaga. Okay, and he and my mother were involved, but we don't talk about that much.  
  
"Tyssed, Rin, you're early," I growled at him irritably. "We're still in the whole try-not-to-kill-anyone stage of dinner prep."  
  
"Perhaps you should not quit your day job, Secc Linna," he teased me, giving me a hug. "Everyone who lived at Home knows you are destined for greater things than mere cooking. You have to be. While I was there, the fire alarms were set off more times by the smoke in your apartment than the rest of Home combined, were they not?"  
  
"Nice to have a record for something," I muttered.  
  
Naaga tugged on Rin's sleeve. "Where's Miyu? Weren't you supposed to bring her with you?"  
  
Miyu--my best friend. She used to be a Crusader, but these days she was a goalie for the Guado Glories. Rin was supposed to pick her up in Guadosalam and then head to Besaid. "I've no idea," he answered. "When I arrived at her domicile in Guadosalam, I was informed that she has been absent for some weeks now. Have you heard from her?"  
  
"Man, they're just dropping like flies, aren't they?" Naaga asked cheerfully, sounding totally unconcerned. "First Yuna, now Miyu."  
  
"The High Summoner is missing?" Rin wanted to know.  
  
"Yeah, she's been gone for a couple weeks now too. She took off in the night without a word to anyone. No one knows what happened to her, although I like to think she found Tidus and they eloped," I told him.  
  
There was an awkward silence. "Sis...Tidus isn't coming back. He's gone," Naaga said quietly after the pause.  
  
I ran a hand through my hair. "Yeah, I know. C'mon, let's go inside and get Rin a chair and find a place to put whatever delectable gourmet offering he's brought us."  
  
"Egg muffins," said Rin of the delectable gourmet offering.  
  
"Good enough." I spun on my heels and started for the hut.  
  
"Hey, not to be chauvinistic, but you mind getting that door? This stuff's heavier than it looks, even for a bronzed god like me," said another muffled voice. I turned and saw a large stack of passages with arms attached meandering down the path. When I ran around behind it, it had red hair, so I had a feeling I knew who it was.  
  
"Tell me it's food, babe," I greeted the aforementioned 'stupid gorgeous boyfriend,' who apparently thought that carrying packages that probably weighed as much as he did made him macho. Said boyfriend is named Bickson, and he's the captain of the Luca Goers. Along with my buddy Wakka, who'd been mentally and athletically AWOL since his wife got pregnant, I was co-captain of the Goers' biggest rival team, the Besaid Aurochs. Needless to say, this was the cause of slight amounts of friction between the two of us, mainly becase he refused to admit that his team sucked.  
  
"My grandmother's herbal tea and some corn chips, plus Doram's cherry pie and a couple of burgers sent special from my main man Mitza in Luca--free of charge, because he complains that he doesn't get to see stunning celebrities like you enough. The rest of this stuff is Calm Day presents, and I'd kinda like to put them down now. Hello to you too, by the way. I'd say it's nice to see you, but I can't."  
  
Hint, hint. "Okay, c'mere." I took a couple of boxes off the top, kicked the long blue hanging tapestry that served as our door aside, and ushered him inside. He unceremoniously plopped the rest of his stuff next to Rin's offerings on the table.  
  
"So, you want this now or later?" he asked, scooping up a small box and offering it to Naaga. He'd figured out a long time ago that sucking up to Naaga couldn't hurt--despite the fact that my complete lack of culinary prowess irritated her and her borderline obsessive boycraziness irritated me, we were still pretty close.  
  
"Ooh, Bickson, you shouldn't have!" she cooed, giving him a peck on the cheek and smirking at me when he wasn't looking. I cracked my knuckles warningly and she shuffled over to the other side of the room before ripping open the paper and holding up a small pair of red earrings. "I love them!"  
  
"I thought you might. Gotta keep myself in good graces with your sister. Speaking of which..." He handed me a package too. "You've been mentioning this lately."  
  
I took the box, opened it, and immediately sat down and started cracking up. "Tysh, babe, we've been around each other too long. Go get that box on my bed and take a look."  
  
He did and started laughing too. "An identical pair of movie sphere recorders," he chuckled. "That's a little scary."  
  
"Hey, they say to get people gifts you'd want yourself," I told him, picking the recorder up and aiming it at him. "Is it loaded?"  
  
"Yep. Just point and click."  
  
"Smile!" I ordered, pressing the RECORD button.  
  
He grinned and flexed his muscles until I threw a boot at him. Wow, my laundry was still on the floor. I should probably fix that. Naaga, predictably, pounced on the camera and started in on her idol singer routine. I rolled my eyes and turned toward Rin for some sanity. He just smiled complacently and waved.  
  
I turned it off. "Well, that was fun."  
  
Her pop star act having come to a premature end, Naaga pushed Bickson over to my bed. "Here, have a seat or something. I've gotta go outside and...umm...check on the prawns."  
  
I slipped 500 gil into her hand for the pizza as she passed. "Yeah, Rin," I sighed, "you can sit down too."  
  
"Finally," Bickson sighed, sinking down on the bed, "a little peace and quiet. Luca's been crazy lately."  
  
I looked at him with interest. "Yeah?"  
  
"You haven't been there in the last few weeks, huh?"  
  
"I've only gone a couple times since last season ended. What's going on?"  
  
"The same thing that's going on everywhere. Luca is a Youth League hotbed--the urban blitz crowd's pretty young and the nearest temple's in Kilika, so we're their prime demographic. The idiots from New Yevon have been pressuring the sphere networks to broadcast their propaganda. 'One Thing at a Time.' Shelinda's getting desperate to run anything other than ads. Actually, while I'm thinking about that, she wanted to know if she could get an interview with you."  
  
"And you're just the messenger, huh?" I snorted. "Yeah, sure. I always have time to kill."  
  
"Wait. I'm not following this," Naaga interrupted, banging the door as she came back inside. "The Youth League? New Yevon?"  
  
"I take it you are not much interested in politics, Secc Naaga," Rin said gently, then explained, "New Yevon is a religious faction that was formed perhaps a year ago. It is very similar to its old counterpart, with a few minor differences--it is now led by one man, a praetor, instead of four maesters, and it uses machina."  
  
"Which they call machines," Bickson reminded him. "And isn't it led by a chairman?"  
  
"Up until a few days ago, at which point the chairman and his son were forced to leave the party. Rumor has it that they were attempting to seize too much power, but of course it is only a rumor. To continue, the Youth League was formed in opposition to New Yevon. Its members are primarily glorified sphere hunters and ex-Crusaders. The two groups have...well, it's a long story, but suffice it to say that New Yevon has been hoarding sphere records of Spira's history. The Youth League, whose purpose is attempt to discover Spira's true past without the temple's deceit, has been demanding that these records be released to the public. New Yevon refuses, and this is the crux of the argument."  
  
Bickson asked, "So I'm guessing things have been pretty quiet here, right?"  
  
"Unh-huh. Nothing ever happens in Besaid. Wakka's wife has maybe a month left to go in her pregnancy, and other than dealing with that we've all been about as active as a convention of Tonberries." I got up to take the cold food outside to the ice pool. "I'd kill for a little action around here."  
  
"Be careful what you wish for, Secc Linna," Rin warned me as I headed out back. "You might get it."  
  
**********  
  
Translations:  
  
cred, tysh, tyssed - respectively "shit, damn, dammit." Linna seems to curse a lot. -_-;; (Note: henceforth these and "Secc" will be used so frequently I'll probably stop translating them here. Words to know.)  
  
Secc [Linna, Naaga, Miyu, etc.] - Miss [Linna, Naaga, Miyu, etc.] 


	2. Disaster in Bloom

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
So how many of you opened the story because you thought the back-of-cover blurb was cool and then wondered what you're doing in Besaid when you're supposed to be in Bikanel? Yeah. I would've been confused too. Just bear with me. I swear it'll all make sense soon.  
  
Oh, and lawyers: please don't sue me. Yay.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 2: Disaster in Bloom  
  
**********  
  
"So tell me again why I'm doing this," I asked Bickson for maybe the fourteenth time since we'd gotten off the Kilika-Luca ferry. It was a gorgeous day as usual in Luca, the kind that's just too damn pretty to waste doing interviews for a pansy-ass reporter with bad fashion sense who works for a sphere network that no one watches anyway because everyone's too busy with their own moronic political factionalism. But I'm ranting again.  
  
He glanced over at me. He'd already heard this thirteen previous times; he was probably getting sick of it. "Goodness of your heart?"  
  
"Not on your life."  
  
"Dinner at Mitza's--on me."  
  
"Sold. Where are we meeting this chick?"  
  
"The square. She said she'd have the whole thing set up."  
  
At least she didn't lie. The entire square was rigged with lights and cameras and mikes. The whole mess was, predictably, focused on the fountain, which was apparently going to be the picturesque backdrop for my big cable debut.  
  
I'd been on the scene maybe 0.03 seconds before a woman in a large green birdlike outfit fluttered up to me. She looked high-strung enough to fit Bickson's description of Shelinda, but the mike she was carrying probably would've clued me in to who she was anyway. Just to make sure I wasn't dealing with some network flunky, though, I asked, "So you'd be Shelinda, am I right?"  
  
"Sure am!" she answered perkily. Whoa. Someone had had her coffee that morning. "And of course you're the famous Linna. Well, are you ready to get started?" I started to say something. I have no idea what, because it didn't matter. She had already launched.  
  
"Hi, everyone! I'm here today in sunny Luca with one of blitzball's biggest names, Linna of the Besaid Aurochs! Since her appearance on the blitz circuit more than two years ago, this Al Bhed hotshot has made herself famous among fans--and infamous among members of the other teams in the major leagues--for her Nap Shot 3." She finally paused for a breath. Oh. Hey. The cameras were rolling.  
  
"So, Linna," she chirped, "blitz season's coming up! What do you think about the changes to the game in the Spira League?"  
  
I winced. Those changes were still a really sore subject with me--and every other blitzer in Spira, as evidenced by Bickson's gag reflex off-camera. The Spira League was the name given to the first tournament of the blitz season, and it is the bane of our existences. This is because it was developed not by blitzers, but by bureaucrats in New Yevon who decided the game needed a twist and that the best way to obtain said twist was to remove all the actual challenges in the gameplay. The Spira League tournament was now based almost entirely on pre-game strategy--that is, who's in what position and what kind of formations the team's going to use. As if that weren't bad enough, game length has been cut in half and most tech shots have been banned, rendering my trademark Nap Shot 3 absolutely useless. I firmly believe that this has had a profound negative impact on Spirans' attention spans. Then again, no one listens to me anyway--or so I thought until about three hours after that interview ended.  
  
"Why are you asking me this? Hey, suits, they suck, don't make us do this," I moaned. "At least we still have the regular season to look forward to after Spira League, or Luca'd have a strike on its hands."  
  
"That's great," she breezed through, cutting me off. "Have you hired anyone for next season yet?"  
  
Oh, cred, I hadn't even thought about it yet. I'd better get on that if I wanted a shot at the Spira League this year. Obviously I was going to get no help from Wakka, the lout. I was torn between wanting to applaud him for being so devoted to his pregnant wife and wanting to smack him upside the head for totally waltzing out on his team. All he was doing was pacing around the village anyway. "Of course I have," I bluffed. Lying through your teeth is always a good strategy where I come from when the alternative is not saving your ass. "Unfortunately, I'm not at liberty to release that information until the beginning of the season." Ooh, big English words. Man, I was getting good these days.  
  
I felt pretty proud of myself for that one, but Shelinda didn't even notice. "And what about your relationship with the Luca Goers' captain, Bickson?"  
  
Said captain was snickering behind his hand on the other side of the lenses. I'd better say something sensitive, I decided, but then I realized I couldn't think of anything. "What insightful comments am I supposed to be offering here? I deal with the fact that he's prettier than I am, he deals with the fact that I can beat him up, we both deal with the fact that neither one of us has enough free time for a relationship anyway. In between the dealing, we have a lot of fun. End of story."  
  
"Fascinating!" I was starting to see the pattern here. Shelinda asks a question, I provide two seconds of commentary, Shelinda shuts me up and asks another question."So, the second anniversary of the beginning of the Eternal Calm was two days ago. How far do you think the status of the Al Bhed has come since then?"  
  
"You mean after the rest of Spira stopped treating us like dirt? It's come a long way. Up until just a little while before the Calm started, I couldn't walk around Luca without my goggles on. Today the same people who spat on me are using machina to get to work."  
  
Shelinda darted a nervous glance at the cameras. "Umm...you mean *machines*, right?"  
  
Been living under a rock? Then I'd better explain this one. Yevon--the religious cult/ political party/angry mob to which everyone in Spira except the Al Bhed had belonged until several people proved that it was complete crap--had these teachings designed to prohibit the use of machina. This was on the theory that it gave people too much power, thus why Bevelle attacked the city of Zanarkand a thousand years ago in the aptly-named Machina War. However, these same godly frauds realized that they wouldn't live without some machina; stuff like water cannons for their blitz spheres, special lights, and so on. They called these 'machines' to ease their consciences. Two years later, both the religion and the tradition of skirting around its tenets were alive in a demonic zombie-kinda form that annoyed me to no end.  
  
"Stop that; they're machina. I still don't know why that's such a big deal. You've all seen how much they can improve your lives, so why are you still freaking out about what a couple of musty teachings from a defunct religion say?"  
  
"Speaking of that 'defunct' religion," Shelinda interrupted, "there's been a lot of conflict lately between New Yevon and the Youth League. Word on the street has it that you're a member of the Youth League. Any truth to that?"  
  
I snorted. "You kidding me? I'm not a member of anything; I'm a blitzer. I don't really want to get involved in politics."  
  
But she wouldn't drop it. "You're not a Youth League member? Then you're a supporter of New Yevon?"  
  
This time I actually laughed out loud. "Well, I'm not a Yevonite."  
  
She turned to the cameras. "You heard it here first, folks! Blitz star Linna has confirmed that she is definitely not allied with New Yevon, which means she's a supporter of the Youth League!"  
  
What just happened here? "Hey, waiddaminute--"  
  
"Well, looks like that's all the time we have for today, folks. See you next time!" Shelinda sang out. The cameras clicked off.  
  
"Yo, Shelinda, I'm pretty sure I didn't actually say--"  
  
"Who cares? It'll make great copy, and it's not really a big deal anyway. Listen, thanks for agreeing to do this for me. I really appreciate it."  
  
"Sure. Welcome." I slunk back to the bridge, where Bickson was leaning over a railing and looking considerably more serious than he had a few minutes ago.  
  
"Great job," he told me half-heartedly, handing me my gear bag.  
  
I cracked my knuckles. "I try."  
  
"Are you going straight to the apartment, or are you headed somewhere else first?"  
  
"Hadn't thought about it yet. Now that I am, I'm thinking I'll go put my stuff up and then hit the gym for a while. I really miss that crazy exercise-bike thing of theirs."  
  
"Cool. Actually, I'll take your stuff if you want. I'm headed up anyway."  
  
Once in a while, even a blitz guy has a sensitive moment. "Yeah? Thanks."  
  
"Sure." Whoa. Too sensitive. Something was going on. "And...green eyes?" he added in the same worried tone that was really freaking me out.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You know where to find me if you get in trouble."  
  
"What kind of trouble would I--" I started, but he was already gone. "Huh," I grunted to myself, and started for the stadium.  
  
****  
  
Two and a half hours later, I'd been in and out of both the gym and the shower and was on my way up via the fire escape stairs to the DorkDorm, as outsiders like me so kindly refer to the Luca Goers' suites in the stadium. I made it about halfway up the first flight of stairs when the guy walking past me hissed, "Bitch."  
  
Normally I'd be the type to grab his arm, drag him to a landing if necessary, and demand an explanation while pummeling his face, but I was tired and feeling generous, so I let it go and kept walking. About six steps later, two teenage girls brushed past me, staring and giggling. By the time I got out of the stairwell, I'd passed three other people, all of whom had looked at me strangely or just glared.  
  
I, for one, was wondering who all the hostile people were and what they were doing on the fire escape stairs. I never found out the answer to the second question, but the first was answered as soon as I set foot on Bickson's floor and a small but decidedly hostile mob pounced on me.  
  
"You're with those Youth League troublemakers?!"  
  
"I can't believe my favorite blitzer is anti-New-Yevon! I used to look up to you!"  
  
"No doubt about it--she's a firebrand, just like that Nooj!"  
  
"She's trying to defile the teachings!"  
  
"The only thing I'm trying to do is get to the damn door, people!" I snapped. "Look, I'm not sure what you're doing here or where you got the impression that I'm with the Youth League, but I'd really appreciate it if you'd all let me get through, got it?"  
  
"Just like a Youth Leaguer, always trying to run from a fight!" someone in the crowd sneered.  
  
"Aww, she looks kinda scared!" someone else was catcalling. "What's the matter, Linna? Not so tough when the cameras are off?"  
  
"Tough, huh?" I sized the guy up. He was bigger than I was, but he was a little paunchy and I'm a pro blitzer with a fuse that's shorter than Rikku's attention span. I could take bigger fry than this one. "Okay, kid, you call me a firebrand? Let me teach you why your mother told you never to play with fire!"  
  
"Linna!" The door flew open and Bickson propped his arm up on the doorjamb, trying to look casual. "I'm not sure what kind of party you're throwing in my hallway, but it's not the best place for a boxing match. Don't beat that poor guy up; that's not even close to a fair fight."  
  
Small Fry and I both turned and scowled at the same time, offering protests in unison detailing exactly why we should be allowed to kick each other's asses right there, right then. Bickson rolled his eyes, calmly informed the members of the mob that if they didn't leave immediately, they would be thrown from the fifth-floor stairwell, and hustled me into his apartment before anyone could protest.  
  
"What the hell was that about?" I demanded irritably, jumping on his bed.  
  
He calmly pulled up a chair and tossed me a pillow to slug. "Haven't seen the news yet, huh?"  
  
I stopped hitting the pillow--it was already getting flat anyway. "No. What gives?"  
  
Silently, he turned the sphere on. I was greeted with the image of myself and Shelinda. "You're not a Youth League member? Then you're a supporter of New Yevon?" she was saying.  
  
"Well, I'm not a Yevonite." My laugh sounded bad even to me, but I wasn't saying anything particularly evil. I didn't get it yet. That was all I'd said about the whole thing, right?  
  
"You heard it here first, folks! Blitz star Linna is definitely not allied with New Yevon, which means she's a supporter of the Youth League!"  
  
"Sure," I was saying.  
  
The terrible beauty of it was that it was actually done *well*. They'd changed camera angles throughout the interview, so it didn't look odd when they switched again for the last line. The one off to my right must have been left rolling after the other ones had stopped. I had to give them credit--I'd never seen film doctored so perfectly.  
  
I threw the pillow into the wall and stared at Bickson. "Hey, they cut that! I thought the cameras had shut off! She said 'thank you' and I said 'sure.' I never told her I was a Youth League supporter! I could sue the fink for slander."  
  
"You could," he agreed, "but that would take months of litigation and paperwork, and you have a pretty big problem to deal with right now. Looks like more people are watching this than we thought. Half the population of Spira's gonna want your blood by nightfall."  
  
"Oh, how encouraging!" I snapped angrily. "Man, that little Spiral conspiracy of yours had nothing on this. I've got the entire institution of Yevon on my ass. Why is this such a big deal to these morons?"  
  
He looked like he wanted to put a hand on my shoulder or something, but he'd been around me long enough to know when to keep his distance. "Look, small comfort here," he said from across the room, "but I think what New Yevon's doing is completely unconscionable too. Supporting the Youth League is the right thing to do. I'm on your side."  
  
"What side?! I didn't even have a side until five seconds ago. Now I'm gonna go enlist as an officer in the Youth League just to piss those Neo-Yevonite punks off!"  
  
"Hey, Linna, I don't think that's a--" But I was already gone. 


	3. Highroad Winds

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
A lot of people have mentioned that the Al Bhed is still getting on their nerves. My rule of thumb is to try not to use more than the games do; however, if being confused bothers you and you don't like scrolling, you might want to keep an online translator open in another window so you can input lines as they come up. You can find one here: http://www.j-maxx.net/abtrans/  
  
This chapter is dedicated to: everyone who's reviewed so far, the con photographer Maboroshi, my pet cosplaying Auron-chan because he'll never get this far in the story, and all the lawyers who aren't going to sue me for this.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 3: Highroad Winds  
  
**********  
  
The hover touched down in front of the Mi'ihen Highroad Travel Agency twenty minutes later. I'd have to transfer hovers there and then hike on foot to Youth League HQ at the end of Mushroom Rock Road, but first I wanted to stop at the Agency and pick up a few supplies. I was totally unarmed and I wasn't looking forward to dealing with fiends or mobsters without weapons or at least some food. Damn, I hadn't even waited long enough to get that free dinner at Mitza's.  
  
I hadn't been to the Mi'ihen Agency in a while, but as soon as I walked in it was obvious that a few personnel changes had taken place since my last visit. I knew Ropp was working as a mechanic in Bevelle, and presumably Clissi the Twit had gotten married and settled down to work as a domestic trophy somewhere with 2.5 cherubic blond children. Or maybe died. I honestly didn't care all that much. They'd been replaced by a very formal, very polite brunette who reminded me of a bowing and less intelligent version of the old Miyu.  
  
Speaking of Miyu, where was she anyway? It wasn't like her to just abandon a house she was supposed to be taking care of and not even leave a note when she knew Rin would be looking for her. Something pretty important must have happened if she'd run off. And if she hadn't...I didn't even want to think about it.  
  
I was browsing the shelves, trying to find any weapon more substantial than a slingshot and maybe some canned pasta (gotta keep those carbs up) when someone tapped me on the shoulder. I spun and came face-to-face with the one person I should have been expecting but wasn't: Rin. Mistake. Everyone should always be expecting Rin.  
  
"Secc Linna," he said by way of greeting, never one to waste time, "I dislike being the bearer of bad news, but Naaga has gone missing."  
  
I scoffed and went back to ravioli-hunting. "And you're bothering me with this why? Give it a rest, Rin; she's a big girl now. She's probably just chasing after another one of her boy toys anyway."  
  
"For two days? She failed to return to Besaid after yesterday morning."  
  
"She told me she was going to visit Naida," I muttered. Even after our exploits together in the Via Purifico two years earlier, the scantily-clad merchant and I still weren't on the most cordial terms--she'd stolen this guy I'd dated once, and...never mind. You don't care, and if you do, you probably shouldn't. Anyway, Naaga's complete awe of her still grated on my nerves.  
  
"Naida is--oh, no. This could be dangerous." Rin's normally tanned-to-a-crisp face was suddenly pale.  
  
I looked at him sharply. That almost-panicked tone of voice was rare for Rin, who was the original master of balanced, harmonious calmness. His mantra, which I'd heard maybe fifty thousand times while he was teaching me blitz, was 'Take two deep breaths and count to ten.' He maintained that it could not only keep you calm in any situation, but also cure world hunger and win blitz matches.  
  
"Whaa? Why?" I demanded. "Where is Nai--"  
  
"I'd better go. Please, don't get yourself into any trouble if at all possible, although somehow I doubt that." And with that, he had dashed outside and launched himself into the hover. The bewildered pilot blinked, shrugged, resettled her aviator's cap on her head, and took off into the wild blue yonder in the direction of Mushroom Rock.  
  
"Hey, that's my ride!" I bellowed, but they were already gone.  
  
Now it was my turn to blink for a couple seconds. Hover gone. Domestic Chocobos gone. It looked like I was going to be doing this the old-fashioned way, I realized, and started walking.  
  
*****  
  
The trek to the gate that separated the Mi'ihen Highroad from Mushroom Rock Road was actually pretty uneventful. Occasionally some disgruntled wayfarer (as soon as I thought that one up, I was so instantly pleased with myself that I spent five minutes translating it into English, hoping I'd get a chance to use it on someone) would charge past me, but they were all in too big a hurry to get somewhere to notice me.  
  
As soon as I got to the gate, I started questioning Rin's definition of 'trouble.'  
  
I heard the mob before I saw it. They were standing--I use the term loosely, since a lot of them looked like the kind of geniuses that still walk on all fours and have prehensile tails--at the gate the Crusaders had set up more than two years ago for Operation Mi'ihen. There were Crusaders there today, too, but--waiddaminute. I came to a screeching halt. The Crusaders had been disbanded after the Calm began. So what was the deal with them being out in full force today--and what was the deal with Miyu being with them, I wondered with a jolt as I recognized one of the faces behind the metal masks.  
  
I ducked behind a pillar so I could hear what they were saying without being seen. The crowd on my side of the gate was really getting angry now.  
  
"Let us in!" You notice how the Yevonites always come up with the good lines?  
  
"We know the Youth League has been stockpiling spheres that belong to the temples! Give them up and no one will be harmed!"  
  
"The wrath of New Yevon will fall upon your sinful heads!"  
  
I wasn't liking the tones of their voices or the exclamation points at the end of their sentences, and I liked the words they were saying even less. This was definitely my cue to barge in and do something incredibly stupid that, if I'd stopped to think about it for five seconds, would have been such an obvious bad idea that I would've slunk back to Luca and none of what followed would have ever happened. "Hey!" I said, stepping out from behind the pillar and facing the unwashed masses, "You guys have some kind of problem with the Youth League?"  
  
"Yes!" spluttered one of the Yevonites. "These sacreligious monsters are withholding sacred spheres that document the history of our people!"  
  
Oh, really. "Hey, wait, isn't that what *you guys* are doing?" I asked.  
  
"Most certainly not! We are preserving the holy tradition of Spira. New Yevon is merely protecting those spheres--protecting them from idiots like these!"  
  
"But those idiots won't let us pass!" yelled another. As I watched, he hurled himself against the gate straight toward Miyu. The iron bars, rusty from two and a half years of braving the elements in muggy Mi'ihen, creaked ominously.  
  
The corner of Miyu's mouth curled dangerously and she brandished the heavy, wicked-looking sword she was carrying. "I don't want to have to hurt you," she threatened the man. She was trying to sound low and dangerous, but I could tell she was nervous and her voice was fluking up higher than she wanted it to. What I could see of her face was flushed. She and the others were sweating bullets back there.  
  
"You see? You see what they do to us?!" The Yevonite turned to me, looking exasperated. "All we wanted to do was talk to their leader. Now we'll have to cut them all down in the name of Yevon!" He whipped out his own sword from the scabbard at his side--how had I missed that before?--and started whanging away at the gates.  
  
He looked like a complete dork, but he and I and everyone else there knew that the gates were in bad shape, and in three minutes he could shatter them completely.  
  
"Hey, creep," I hissed at him. "Look, I'm sure their leader's probably very busy at the moment, trying to figure out how to get back the spheres you guys are stealing from the rest of Spira. But there's no need to harass these poor people. You want to pick a fight with a Youth Leaguer? I'm your girl."  
  
Realization dawned. "Hey, she's the one I saw on the sphere network! The Yevon-hater!"  
  
"That's right! She's the one that's trying to make us all afraid to use machines!"  
  
"Linna, isn't it? The blitzer? Isn't that just *like* an Al Bhed?!"  
  
They say that being a celebrity goes to your head; they're not kidding. It isn't exactly that you think of yourself as better than other people, just more infallible. You get cocky. It leads to recklessness, because you subconsciously believe that because you've done so much, nothing else life can throw at you can do much to hurt you. This had been my mother's problem, it was Bickson's problem when I'd first met him, and it was starting to turn into my problem. This would might help to explain some of the stupid things I proceeded to do.  
  
I stared at the woman who had spoken and calmly pushed my goggles up over my eyes. "Don't you *dare* say that's like an Al Bhed. We spent hundreds of years being your second-class citizens, and damn if I'm gonna take any more of it!"  
  
The moron working on the gates finally took one more mighty swing with his sword and the whole shebang crumbled. Cred. Time to take action. While everyone else was just standing there, I jumped forward with a perfect Nap Shot 3 kick and knocked the gate-whanging Yevonite flat on his back. While I was at it, I snatched his sword and turned around to see who else wanted a piece of me.  
  
The battle had begun. The Crusaders charged forward, surrounding the Yevonites so they couldn't pass. The Yevonites, seeing that now they were going to have to put their metal where their mouths had been, drew their own swords and started slashing.  
  
I'd dealt with fiends before, but I'd never been in melee combat. Turns out it's not really all that different from blitzball. When you have the ball, a lot of people come at you at once. You dodge the tackles you can, break the tackles you can't, and try to give as good as you get.  
  
"How's it going?" I asked Miyu sardonically after ripping a nasty-looking six-inch gash in the coat of one of the Yevonites. This was happening more by chance than anything; I was just trying not to get killed. You always wonder what you'd do if something like this happened. I'll tell you--you'd fight like a madwoman. Or man. Whichever.  
  
"A lot better before you showed up," she hissed back. "Blitz has gotten you way too used to getting a crowd worked up."  
  
"Like you coulda taken them if they rushed you. So this is where you've been the last few weeks, huh?"  
  
She whipped her sword around and slammed the point about half an inch from one of the Yevonite's throats. His eyes kept getting wider and wider until his courage broke completely, at which point he turned tail and fled. "Mmm-hmm," she replied. "The Guado have been gone from Guadosalam for most of the Calm; you know I've been taking care of Nav's place. But when New Yevon came to town and started blaring all this filth about Nooj and the Crusaders, I knew that I had to come here. I fought alongside Mevyn Nooj during Operation Mi'ihen. Maybe I felt like I owed him."  
  
"I'm amazed you didn't freak out about having to attack Yevonites like this," I told her as I forced another one to the wall. He ran too. The crowd was starting to thin out.  
  
It was becoming apparent what was going on: the Crusaders, while they'd always been a motley crew, had at least some training and combat experience. They were fighting civilians. In fact, all the New Yevonites I'd seen so far had been civilians. Were their clergy still boarded up in the temples? I wondered if they had an organized military arm too.  
  
"I was a little apprehensive at first," Miyu admitted. "I might have joined New Yevon if things had happened differently. But...well, I'm a lot different than I was two years ago, Linna."  
  
"So I noticed." When I'd met her, Miyu was this quiet, faceless woman who was--aside from Rin--the only hint of calm rationale or elegance in our little circle. After losing her fiance to Sin years earlier, she had retreated into a polite, almost silent shell, not to mention the fact that she joined the Crusaders and the Guado Glories. She'd also been a devout Yevonite who was devoted to defending Spira from Sin, even though the Crusaders had all been excommunicated for using machina in their operations. It was only two years ago, when she'd discovered that Yevon's teachings were nothing more than lies made up to keep the people quiet, that she'd broken out from that shell with her sword already swinging. And woe to anyone foolish enough to get in her way.  
  
"That the last of them?" she called to the others as the last Yevonite on our side skittered off down the Highroad.  
  
I looked around. Seeing no further opposition, I took my sphere camera out of my bag and recorded the scene--maybe I could show it off to the guys on the team next time we went to the bar in Luca. Miyu glanced at the camera, raised an eyebrow, and made an exasperated face at it. I sighed and put it away. Not the time.  
  
"I think so," one of the men replied. He removed his mask and wiped the sweat off his forehead. "We'd better get someone out here to repair this gate."  
  
"Leave it," Miyu told him. "Anyone who wants to get to us will have to fight their way through Mushroom Rock Road, and the New Yevonites aren't well-armed enough to do that. Even if they could, our border patrol's hard to beat, right?"  
  
"Right!" cheered the other members of the border patrol. She was doing the lets'-go-team-ego-boost thing Tidus had stressed so much in blitz.  
  
"But..." a woman in purple asked, looking at me, "...officer? What are we going to do about her?"  
  
"I'm not sure yet." Miyu looked me up and down. "Linna, are you officially volunteering for duty in the Youth League?"  
  
About this time I made my second or third fatal mistake: I nodded. "Yeah. I am."  
  
"Then we'd better take her straight to Mevyn Nooj," she told the others.  
  
"Uh...ma'am? Don't you mean Commander Lucil?" someone asked.  
  
"I don't, at that. I've got a feeling the Mevyn will want to see her." Miyu spun on her heels and started walking. "Coming?" she called over her shoulder to me.  
  
"Yes, ma'am!" I replied, saluting, as we started down the long road to Mushroom Rock. Belatedly, it occured to me that I'd never picked up my canned ravioli. This thought would haunt my dreams ceaselessly in the weeks to come. 


	4. Flash of Steel

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
I promise the Bikanel connection will start to make sense right about...now. I think there's an unwritten rule that you're not allowed to sue the author before the back-of-the-book blurb even makes sense.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 4: Flash of Steel  
  
**********  
  
We made it down the length of Mushroom Rock Road without incident. There were a ton of fiends crawling around everywhere, but most of them kept their distance from Miyu and her big, scary sword. The biggest problem we had to deal with was the multitude of adoring underlings that kept swarming around us--I got the feeling that Miyu was a pretty big-deal officer in her own right, not to mention the added benefit of my celebrity. I was pretty popular around here too. Finally, we made it to the lift, and a pinkish (I swear this was my only impression of her at the time) woman who was apparently called Elma motioned us through.  
  
I hadn't seen Youth League HQ when it was Crusader HQ during Operation Mi'ihen, but Miyu told me it hadn't really changed much. It actually wasn't that different from a military version of Besaid Village--a tent city, and the main command building was located where the temple would be in Besaid. The centerpiece of the town. It even had the little kids running around, except here they were swinging swords at each other. Oh, and there were people in uniform everywhere, hefting dangerous-looking weapons. Fun place.  
  
"Commander Lucil!" Miyu called as soon as we were within earshot of the redhead standing outside the command building. Both of them thumped their chests with their fists, which I figured must be the neo-Crusader version of the Yevon/blitz bow. "Linna is a new recruit. Request permission to bring her to the Mevyn."  
  
Lucil's eyes widened slightly as she sized me up. "The Mevyn...well, he doesn't have any meetings going on now. Bring her up, Officer."  
  
"Thank you!" Miyu saluted again and half-dragged me past Lucil and into the building. "All right," she whispered, "I know this might be difficult for you, but just try not to act like a troublemaker."  
  
"I'll be on my best behavior," I muttered back.  
  
"Good." She strode toward the center of the building. "Mevyn Nooj!" she called.  
  
"Come in," a voice called back. We pushed through the door into what I assumed was Nooj's office. A woman was sitting with her back to us at a desk inside, pouring over the maps on the table. She turned to face us, and I realized that she was actually a he--with hair that was longer by a foot or two than I was tall. He had broad, muscular shoulders, but what I noticed was the metallic leg. Machina prosthesis? Those were still in the experimental stages and cost a fortune. This guy must have paid...well...an arm and a leg.  
  
"Ah, so we've been graced by a visit from the famous Linna. I wondered how long it'd take," he greeted us. "The two of you made good time. I was only informed of the incident a few minutes ago."  
  
"Our apologies, Mevyn," Miyu answered him. "Conflict was not our intention. The New Yevon upstarts have been repelled, but the gate has been lost."  
  
"The gate's not important," he replied, waving a hand. "The conflict is. While I admire your courage, Linna, your celebrity combined with your bad temper may mean that we can't use you at Mushroom Rock. The Yevonites are, as always, blunt, but their assessment of you as a firebrand is essentially correct."  
  
Hastily, I began, "Nooj, I--"  
  
"Let me finish." He held up a hand for silence. "However, my policy is that the Youth League should not turn away anyone who is willing to work for its cause. I think I know a way you can provide invaluable service for us." He turned to Miyu. "Officer, go ask Commander Lucil if Gippal is still here."  
  
Gippal? Oh, no. Maybe there was more than one.  
  
"Sir!" Miyu saluted and left.  
  
I stood there awkwardly, cracking my knuckles and shifting my weight around and fervently praying that there had to be some Gippal other than the one I was thinking of. "All right, Linna," Nooj continued, motioning for me to have a seat in one of the chairs opposite his desk and interrupting my thoughts while he was at it, "what do you know about the Machine Faction?"  
  
I chose my words carefully. "They're an Al Bhed group at Djose Temple. Machina researchers. Aren't they developing weapons for you?"  
  
"They will be in a few minutes if all goes according to plan, but as of now, they're an independent group. They may produce weapons for both the Youth League and New Yevon before the conflict is over," he replied. "Ahh, Gippal, come in."  
  
I looked over at the door. Tysh; of course there was only one Gippal. Still wearing the same fancy outfit, still sporting the macho eyepatch over one spiraled green eye, still with the same smirk planted on his face. He hadn't changed a bit since I was six and he'd tried to kiss me in the sandbox at the playground. I'd been almost flattered for about five minutes--the time his lust for me lasted before he kissed Naida. Still a six-year-old Casanova, after all this time.  
  
"Have a seat," Nooj offered the two of them. Miyu took the chair to my right, putting herself as far away from Gippal as possible. I could tell from the sour expression on her face that he hadn't been above trying to use his charms on her, too. I shook my head.  
  
Mr. Smooth slid into the seat on my left. "Hey there, Linna. It's been too long, don't you think?"  
  
"Eternity wouldn't be long enough, mucan," I spat back.  
  
Nooj coughed. "Gippal, how is the development phase going?"  
  
"It's pretty lousy, to tell you the truth," Gippal replied, suddenly all business--at least, as close as the perpetually-casual Gippal ever got. "We need parts that we just don't have. Our scouts are telling me that we could probably dig up the stuff we need on Bikanel, so we set up a digging operation there. Only problem is, we don't have anyone to head it."  
  
"Hmm." Nooj was looking at me thoughtfully. "Linna, what do you know about digging?"  
  
"Oh, no." I raised both thick yellow gloves and waved them back and forth at him to indicate that I didn't want any part of this one. "I'm a blitzer, guys. I'm really not big on the whole sandbox thing--ever since I met you," I snapped for Gippal's benefit.  
  
He spread his own hands and flashed me his best cute smile. "Aw, c'mon, Linna. I think it's the perfect job for you. The whole thing's already all set up; all you have to do is be bossy, and I know you're good at that. Your best buddy Naida's already in charge of registering dig candidates."  
  
"You're kidding me!" I screeched. Please, no job where I had to tolerate both Naida *and* Gippal. The Al Bhed don't even believe in a hell, but I was starting to think I was in it. "Miyu, you're gonna let them ship me back to Bikanel?"  
  
She blinked. "You're the one who said you wanted to help the Youth League. Once your friend here has the parts he needs, I assume the Youth League will have the first chance to bid on the technology before he opens it up to the New Yevonites as well...?"  
  
"She's as shrewd as she is beautiful. I like it," Gippal beamed. "What about it, Nooj? Do we have a deal?"  
  
Nooj rubbed his forehead wearily. "She's too well-known. Even in the middle of nowhere, people will recognize her."  
  
"No sweat," the Al Bhed told him. "I can hook her up with a fake ID in no time. What do you think, Miyu?" he asked, framing my face with his hands like a cameraman. "She look like a 'Nhadala' to you?"  
  
"How soon could you get her out there?" Miyu asked sternly, trying to keep the playboy on task.  
  
"Well, we'd have to do it right away, am I right? You need her sparking riots around here like you need a hole in your head. Besides, the sooner we can start production, the better. I've got a feeling you guys are gonna need some heavy artillery in the next couple weeks."  
  
"He has a point," Nooj decided. "All right, Gippal. Say we do this now. How are we going to get her out there without causing a fuss?"  
  
Gippal's answer was immediate. "Airship. I'm not touching the Celsius, but the one Cid used two years ago when they were fighting Sin is still in top shape. What time is it now, six o' clock? Hell, she could be settled in with eight hours of shut-eye by tomorrow morning."  
  
The Mevyn nodded. "All right, Gippal. I trust you. Make it happen."  
  
"You got it, captain." Gippal stood up. "Okay, Nhadala, you're coming with me."  
  
"Dra ramm E ys," I snapped back. "Drec ech'd jumihdaanecs; ed'c y tnyvd!"  
  
"Aqyldmo, cfaadraynd." Gippal's smirk was the widest I'd ever seen it and he started talking in Al Bhed that was just as rapid-fire as mine. Miyu and Nooj were totally bewildered. "Frelr sayhc dryd oui tuh'd ryja y lruela. Huf, oui lyh cdyht ib mega y myto yht kad uh dra airship dryd E's kuehk du ryja rana eh ypuid dah sehidac, un oui lyh syga y pek vicc yht E'mm ryja du lynno oui uid putemo. Yht dryd'mm pa aspynyccehk vun oui yht suna vih vun sa dryh E's cina oui fyhd sa du ryja, cu fro tuh'd oui tu ic ymm y vyjun yht kad uh fedr ed ymnayto?"  
  
"Oui ufa sa pekdesa," I hissed at him, and went.  
  
*****  
  
The airship ride was a brief but revolting experience. Because no one, not even the pilot, was allowed to know what kind of cargo the ship was carrying, I had to sit in the same aft cabin I'd spent three days moping in a couple years back. Actually, I wouldn't've minded cooping myself up in there and moping for a little while longer, but this time the trip was even worse--I had to share the cabin with Gippal, who was in an absolutely brilliant mood and was spending all his time being obnoxiously effervescent. And hitting on me.  
  
"It's too bad we don't have time to pick you up some desert gear before we head out," he chattered. I was slouched in the corner, chin balanced in one rebellious hand, glaring at the wall. "Oh, well. You'll just have to tell people you're a big fan of Linna or something--I'm sure you can lie without too much trouble. You've always been a little con artist."  
  
"The airship uses Linna Locks," I shot back in a monotone, referring to the special type of lock Rin had developed when I was a kid to try to prevent me from picking them. Didn't work then, doesn't work now.  
  
"So does our base of operations at Djose Temple. Isn't it nice to be appreciated?"  
  
"How would you know? The last person to appreciate you was probably your own mother--actually, probably not; you were like this as a kid too," I retorted.  
  
"Okay, we can stop this now and you can learn something about the place you're going to spend your life until further notice, or we can keep insulting each other in circles until I drop you off in the middle of nowhere. Choice is yours, sweetheart," he told me.  
  
If there's one thing I hate about Gippal--aside from the arrogance, the incessant flirting, and his steadfast belief that he is Yevon's gift to mankind--it's his ability to be irritatingly logical about getting you to do something stupid. I scowled and motioned for him to get on with it.  
  
"All right then. Our scouting team has divided the Sanubia Desert into five regions: the Northern, Southern, Eastern, Western, and Central Expanses. Not all of them are currently being excavated, but the people there can tell you about that better than I can. As we speak, your camp is set up in the Southern Expanse, near the Oasis."  
  
"Where was Home located?" I wanted to know.  
  
He snorted in irritation to let me know that this was a stupid question. "We're not entirely sure yet, but my bet is the Central Expanse. Makes sense, doesn't it, considering that Home was in the MIDDLE OF THE FREAKIN' DESERT."  
  
I went Naaga for a second and kicked him. "No need to get snippy with me, buster; I'm doin' *your* job here."  
  
"Gotcha. As I was saying, the Djose arm of the dig is supplying you with recruits and as many tools and other supplies as we can. In return, you're going to ship us all the machina parts and other valuable finds you come up with. This exchange will be conducted via the long-range hover which will arrive twice a week. I'm not sure what else you'll find, but you and the diggers can split up whatever isn't important to us. And this," he concluded, sweeping an arm out around the empty cabin as the airship descended swiftly and ground to a halt, "is your stop, Madame."  
  
**********  
  
Translations:  
  
mucan - loser  
  
"Dra ramm E ys. Drec ech'd jumihdaanecs; ed'c y tnyvd!" - "The hell I am. This isn't volunteerism; it's a draft!"  
  
"Aqyldmo, cfaadraynd. Frelr sayhc dryd oui tuh'd ryja y lruela. Huf, oui lyh cdyht ib mega y myto yht kad uh dra airship dryd E's kuehk du ryja rana eh ypuid dah sehidac, un oui lyh syga y pek vicc yht E'mm ryja du lynno oui uid putemo. Yht dryd'mm pa aspynyccehk vun oui yht suna vih vun sa dryh E's cina oui fyhd sa du ryja, cu fro tuh'd oui tu ic ymm y vyjun yht kad uh fedr ed ymnayto?" - "Exactly, sweetheart. Which means that you don't have a choice. Now, you can stand up like a lady and get on the airship that I'm going to have here in about ten minutes, or you can make a big fuss and I'll have to carry you out bodily. And that'll be embarassing for you and more fun for me than I'm sure you want me to have, so why don't you do us all a favor and get on with it already?"  
  
"Oui ufa sa pekdesa." - "You owe me bigtime." 


	5. Downtrodder

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Welcome to Bikanel, people. The characters described in this chapter are all NPCs in the game, but I own names, personalities, and that good stuff.   
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 5: Downtrodder  
  
**********  
  
I'm not sure what I expected, but it wasn't what I got. In the movies, archaeology seems so grand and complex and rewarding. Diggers get to wear cool hats and swing around bullwhips, and have entire tent colonies with air conditioning and decent food and--above all--showers.  
  
Yeah. Well, that's the movies. In real life, our camp was three tents and a couple of hovers. It was the most miserablely tiny little operation I'd ever seen, and I include the Youth League headquarters, Besaid Village, and Naaga's dollhouses in that statement.  
  
"Lady and gentlemen," Gippal announced with his characteristic grandiosity as soon as we stepped out of the airship, "meet your new forewoman, Nhadala."  
  
Scattered cheers from the small group of Al Bhed who had rushed over to see who we were and appeared to be losing interest now that it was apparent we weren't carrying food. I'd probably gotten more enthusiasm when I'd joined the Aurochs, and they'd been out for my blood. I was looking at a line of three roly-polies, presumably brothers; a single woman (the only other one, which explained Gippal's intro) wearing what looked like a bondage parka and goggles that covered her entire head; a dorky-looking older man with mad scientist hair and a clipboard; a complete weirdo decked out in an entire gas mask(!!); some other guy in a tan bomber jacket with the sleeves rolled up who I could already tell was gonna be oh-so-fun to deal with; and three feet of completely isolation-suited...what was that, a kid? Oh, man. This was gonna be even tougher than I'd thought.  
  
There was silence for a while as everyone sized everyone else up, and finally someone said, "She looks like Linna."  
  
"Say something brilliant," Gippal muttered as he shoved me on the back. Then he called to the troops in a brighter tone, "Well, guys, keep up the good work!" and was gone. No fanfare. No ceremony. Nothin'. And just like that, I was stuck.  
  
Rule number one of unfamiliar situations: always, under any circumstances, look like you know exactly what you're doing. Rule number two: acting tough works pretty well too. I flicked my hair out of my eyes, planted my hands on my hips, and did both.  
  
"Okay," I began, pitching my voice just slightly higher than normal, "like that moron said, my name is Nhadala, and I'm going to be the forewoman of this operation. I'm not sure how long some of you people have been here, but I've been here three minutes, so I'm totally lost. Right now it's about--" I checked my watch, "--8:00 at night local time, so here's what I want to happen. Someone who knows the ropes is gonna show me around this place until I get the lay of the land. Then we're all gonna have a short meeting so I can start figuring out who everyone is. And when we're done with all that, we're gonna get some sleep, because we start at daybreak tomorrow. I want to get in and out of here as soon as possible.  
  
"Now," I concluded, "who wants to take me on the three-minute tour?"  
  
No one raised a hand, but someone shoved Three-Footer forward. He stumbled briefly and then righted himself. In a slightly tinny but pleasant voice, he said, "I am Benzo. I'm the camp translator. I'd be happy to show you around."  
  
"Great." I revised my estimate of his age up about fifteen years; he might well be my age or older. "Let's go."  
  
We left the group and wandered toward the first tent. He lifted the flap to show me the inside, which was filled with rows and rows of shelves. "This is where we're planning on storing the artifacts until the hovers arrive," he explained. "We've also been keeping some supplies in here. The other two tents are our living quarters. It's a little crowded, but you'll be glad that you have them. We've been getting a lot of sandstorms lately."  
  
"Are those a big problem around here?" I asked him.  
  
He shrugged. "I've only been here a week or so, so I can't say for sure. I can tell you that so far they haven't bothered us much, but that may change. Our scouts have noted that the sandstorms are more common in this region of the desert than, say, the Western Expanse."  
  
"What else do you know about the different areas?" I asked.  
  
"Not much," he admitted. "The Central Expanse is accessible by hover, but hovers wouldn't even make a dent in excavating such a large region. We need to find a better way to do things. Umm...maybe Gippal told you we're near the Oasis here. That's why we chose this site for camp, but now it seems like the Western Expanse might actually be safer."  
  
"How are we digging? I don't see any drills or anything like that."  
  
"We wouldn't use them for delicate operations like the kind we're doing. We haven't actually done any digging yet, but the artifacts we expect to find might be hundreds or even thousands of years old. I don't really know much about digging, but I guess you'll be doing it by hand."  
  
"Me?" I asked, eyeing him.  
  
"Well, the workers. You and I probably won't be doing much of the actual scutwork," he amended. "My job is to maintain diplomatic relations with the locals."  
  
I blinked. "What locals? Home's been gone for two years. Maybe ten people live out here."  
  
He just smiled. "If you'd like to see some of the local colors, I'll take you out tomorrow. You might find it an interesting experience. And with that," he added, "we've seen pretty much everything there is to see around here: three tents and a couple of hovers. Do you want to head back and start that meeting of yours now?"  
  
"Sure. Where's a good place to get everyone together?"  
  
"Honestly, nowhere, but the best you'll probably get is out in the open. The weather's been behaving pretty well."  
  
"Okay." I stuck my head in the main residential tent, which seemed to be where everyone was. Immediately it went dead silent. Someone tried to subtly hide the bottle of whatever-it-was, but I could smell it, and it definitely wasn't a strawberry daquiri.  
  
Oh, no. Not on your lives, kids. If they thought I was gonna let them waste time partying and getting drunk and get myself stuck here forever, they had another thing coming. I leaned against one of the tent poles and said calmly, "All right, people, time to party *my* way. Why don't you all come out here for a little while and breathe the fresh night air, huh?" They grumbled a little, but they followed.  
  
"Benzo here has told me a little bit about what we're doing here," I began when everyone was sitting cross-legged in a circle around me like good little boys and a girl. "I'm in the process of coming up with a game plan and I'd like your input. First, though, I have no idea who any of you people are, and we're gonna fix that. So we're gonna go around the circle, just like in kindergarten, and I'll love you forever if you tell me your name and a little bit about yourself, okay? So I'm Nhadala, the big bad forewoman, and I'm kinda a fan of Linna, as you can probably tell." Sweatdrop. Why, Nooj, why of all jobs in the world am I doing this one?  
  
Benzo, who I could already tell was gonna be my ally here, piped up. "I'm Benzo, and I'm the camp translator. I speak English, Al Bhed, Cactuar, and Old Guado fluently, and I'm currently learning the traditional Ronso language."  
  
The guy next to him was the one I'd pegged early on as a little hard to handle--bomber jacket and fingerless gloves. "I'm Jock," he introduced himself with just a hint of a swagger. He'd been the one with the bottle too, I noticed. "I'm the ace pilot around here."  
  
How had I known he'd have a stereotypically macho name like Jock? In fact, he probably didn't--his real name was probably something like Snuud and made him feel insecure enough to need a tough-guy handle. "Anything you'd like to add?" I asked.  
  
"Nope."  
  
Pick your battles, Linna. Or Nhadala. Whichever. "Right then. Next?"  
  
Sitting next to him in a convenient little line were the three roly-poly guys. The biggest was apparently in charge, because he was the one doing the talking for the three of them. "My name's Ihu, and these are my little brothers Tuc and Dnac. I'm the hover mechanic, and these two are my assistants. They're interested in ancient machina. Dnac's kinda slow, though."  
  
"Am not!" Dnac protested, punching the older one. I sensed a domino reaction coming up here, so I shut them up and motioned for the next person to go already.  
  
The next person turned out to be the lone non-Linna/Nhadala woman in camp, and she was sitting maybe seven feet away from the three large warring brothers. "They call me Redeci," she announced. "I'm in charge of cataloguing and packing the finds, as well as taking care of the storage tent."  
  
Next was the funky-haired guy showing signs of encroaching geezerdom. "It's Goma," he introduced himself, "and I'm the leader of the scouting and surveying team."  
  
"And I'm Nedus," said Gas Mask. Oh, cred. I knew him. He was a blitzer. Hung out in Luca. Big on volley shots and always bugging me to teach him some nap techniques. Couldn't block for anything. "My job is mostly dealing with the camp--security, that sort of thing--and managing the freight hover and shipping. I'm also a blitz fan, so we'll get along well." I hoped not, or I was gonna have to tell so many lies it would make even my practiced head spin.  
  
I looked around. "So you're telling me that we have...what, nine people here, and absolutely no one who knows how to dig?"  
  
They all shrugged in unison.  
  
"Oh, great!" I smacked my forehead. "When's the next freight hover scheduled to arrive?"  
  
"Tomorrow morning," Nedus answered.  
  
"Okay, so hopefully we'll have some pit crews and we can start soon. I've been over this a little with Benzo. Given the safety factor, we'll be starting our digs in the Western Expanse. Does anyone have a map of the desert, and maybe a ruler and a pen?"  
  
"I do. Wait just a second." Goma the Geezer took off into the main tent and returned a few seconds later with a very large chart rolled up under his arm, a yardstick, and two pencils.  
  
"Thanks," I said, taking them from him and unrolling the map on the ground. I had to crouch on the near end to keep it from rolling up. I could see several large red Xs scattered out all over the five regions. "What are these for?" I asked.  
  
"They're to mark where our team found evidence of a large artifact. They might not be entirely accurate, since it was done by hover, but we thought they might be a good place to start," Goma replied.  
  
"Okay. Then our first dig will take place...here." I stabbed the X on the southwest side of the map and circled it twice with my pencil. Then I lined the ruler up at the top of the page and started drawing horizontal lines across the map. When I was done with that, I drew vertical lines down the length of the whole thing until I had a neat pencil grid. I labeled the boxes going down on the left side with numbers and the ones going across the top with letters in English order. "Now," I explained to the crowd watching me when I was done, "we have a grid that we can work from. This'll help us tell where the artifacts are and make it easier to find everything. You've been doing all the surveying by hover?"  
  
"Not all of it," answered Ihu, the mechanic and oldest of the Brothers Three. "Say hello to Picket."  
  
All of a sudden my ears were assaulted by a whirring and a high-pitched voice squealing, "Nice to meet ya, boss!"  
  
"What the hell is that?" I demanded, covering my ears.  
  
"It's me, Picket!" Something large and silver shot into my field of vision and stopped about an inch and a half away from my nose. It was about the size of a blender and looked like it could have been made from one, with the addition of a small propeller welded onto the--back? bottom? something.  
  
I blinked and announced in a slightly strangled tone, "That machina is talking."  
  
"Yep," Ihu replied happily. "Isn't it great? My baby Picket here has a camera built into him that'll relay images back to our sphere receiver as soon as it arrives on the next freight hover. Then we'll be able to do all the surveying right from our tents."  
  
"Cool, huh?" Picket sounded pleased with itself--at least, as proud as I've ever heard a machina sound.  
  
"Oh, yeah, definitely." I stretched. "All right. I'm bushed. You guys put the drinks away and get some rest. Breakfast, assuming you people have any around here, is bright and early at seven AM. As soon as we unload the freight hover, we're going right to work. Any questions?" Nope. "Then I'll see you in the morning."  
  
I strode off toward the smaller of the two living tents and was greeted by a couple of cots, equipped with one rough blanket each. No pillows. The only light came from the only other object in the tent, a small stand lamp in one corner. I shut it off, claimed the cot closest to the tent flap by shoving my gear bag underneath it, and stretched out. A few minutes later, I heard Benzo come in and take his own bed. The sound of drinks being poured sifted in from the other tent.  
  
I stared at the blank canvas ceiling for hours before I finally fell asleep. 


	6. Chaos Maelstrom

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Wow, it's been a while, hasn't it? -_-;; Lately I've been a little more absorbed with other projects, but I promise you that Linna (Nhadala) and company are all still in good shape and will get their story out. ^_^ Bear with me.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 6: Chaos Maelstrom  
  
**********  
  
My watch said 6:30 when I rolled off the cot the next morning. Redeci, the artifact lady, was curled on her side two cots over, still bundled up in her shower cap goggles and her bondage parka. I groaned and stumbled outside.  
  
It was still pitch dark outside, but there was a fire already blazing in the center of camp. I made my way over and found that Benzo was the only one up. He was scuttling around on his short legs, stoking the fire and opening packages of canned beans.  
  
"Umm, Benzo?" I asked when I got within earshot. "What are you doing?"  
  
He looked up. "Oh, good morning, Nhadala. It's my job to get meals together for everyone. We don't have all that much, but the freight hover is supposed to bring some things today--I asked for dried fruit and maybe some salted jerky. We've only been here a few days and already everyone's tired of canned beans."  
  
"How is this your job? If you don't have a rotation schedule set up, shouldn't it be Nedus' problem since he's managing the camp?"  
  
Benzo shrugged, deftly twisted the can open with a small knife, and poured its contents out into a large pot. "No one else wants to do it. This keeps things simple. I don't really have much to do during the day anyway. As you said, there's not much of anyone out here to translate to."  
  
The long-suffering and patient cook, rising before the sun for the benefit of others. First Zalitz, now Benzo. As much as I appreciated the concept of the Renaissance man who could cook and was actually willing to, from a personal standpoint I kinda wished these guys would get the tire tracks off their backs and make someone else do something once in a while. I'd learned from two years of captaining a blitz team that anytime you let everyone rely on one person, bad things start to happen. That person becomes a time bomb of pent-up resentment that can explode at any time, and no one else will be expecting it--and in the meantime, they'll all get complacent and lazy. If I was going to be stuck here for how-long-no-one-except-Gippal-(that-bastard)-knew, I was damn well going to make it as easy on myself as humanly possible.  
  
"That does it," I decided, and finished the chore-rotation charts by the time the rest of the crew got up for breakfast.  
  
Over our slightly musty repast of formerly-canned beans eaten straight from the cooking pots (cooking note: this is better than fiend meat but stomach-turningly revolting compared to, say, Mitza's burgers--which is saying something, considering that those things contain more grease than a convention of Yevon clergy), I started planning out the day. "Okay. Everyone sleep well?"  
  
They all nodded groggily through their varying degrees of hangovers and bedhead. I didn't really care whether they'd slept well or not, so I pulled a Shelinda and plowed right through. "That's great. So today: Jock--" cue the smirk; damn it all, why must there always be one smart-aleck in every group? "--as soon as the newbies get here, you're gonna fly 'em out to the Western Expanse and start digging in sector A4." I tapped the corresponding square on the grid with one pudgily-gloved finger. "Redeci and Nedus, as soon as the freight hover gets here and we get the recruits off, you *immediately* go over everything on board and make sure we have everything we need. Ihu, Tuc, Dnac, make sure all the hovers are in good working order, and then I want you three to go with Goma and start scanning the Western Expanse for anything else that looks like it might be important. And Benzo, you and I are going to go have a talk with those locals. Everyone straight on what they're doing for the morning?"  
  
"I have a question!" piped up Dnac, the youngest of the three brothers.  
  
"Shoot."  
  
"When's lunch?"  
  
*****  
  
"So I'm interested to know, Benzo, who are these locals of yours?" I asked as the hover lifted off. Jock had given me a crash course in the basics of flight, looking down his nosestrap at me and insinuating that he'd be there to scrape my sorry ass out of the desert sands with a spatula when I crashed three feet outside of camp. It actually wasn't that complicated; it was one of the first or second wave of machina that the Al Bhed were actually beginning to design and build themselves now that machina--excuuuuuse me, *machine*--research was legal, and as a result it was designed to be pretty user-friendly. I had a sphere-key ignition, joystick for steering, altitude controls, throttle pedal, and windshield wipers, and that was about it. The dimmers on my goggles were turned up to full power, and I could just barely see where I was going over the glare of the desert sands. Benzo had hooked his arms through the seatbelts in the passenger's seat next to me so he could see over the dashboard to tell me where to go.  
  
"You've probably seen them around without realizing it," he smiled. "Their children are usually underfoot. The adults are a lot less skittish on the whole, and once they get to know you, they're very warm--if a little sharp sometimes. I would never have even met them if their leader hadn't extended a personal invitation. We've yet to begin formal diplomatic relations, but I've been dropping by to talk to them a few times in the last few days. Swerve to the left here," he instructed me suddenly. "There. See where we're going?"  
  
I could see a small compound tucked into a crater and filled with green dots. "Those are cacti, Benzo."  
  
"Exactly." He looked pleased. "This is your first look at the Cactuar Nation. You can land in the northeast corner, by that cave."  
  
I struggled to perform a silent touchdown the way Jock had told me I was supposed to and ended up thwumping the hover down on the ground from a height of twenty feet or so, creating a large dust cloud that took several minutes to disperse. When it did, Benzo leapt out of the hover and took off toward the center of the crater. I shrugged and jogged after him.  
  
He stopped just south of the middle in front of a very large cactus that was surrounded by a faintly-glowing green cloud. "This is Marnela," he told me matter-of-factly, like there was nothing out of the ordinary in the fact that he appeared to be introducing me to a large houseplant.  
  
"This is a cactus," I contradicted him.  
  
"This is *Marnela,* the *Cactuar*," he insisted. "Well, properly she is a cactus, but think of her as an adult Cactuar if it helps. And Marnela, this is Nhadala, our forewoman."  
  
I was starting to wonder if maybe the camp interpreter wasn't just a little bit cracked when the cactus started vibrating and squeaking at me. I jumped and fell over. The cactus squeaked even louder and Benzo laughed with it.  
  
"Here," he said. "I'll translate. She's saying, 'Don't worry about it. Most people are surprised when they first see us. I am Marnela, the leader of the Cactuar Nation.'"  
  
I blinked. "Benzo, you brought me all the way out here in the middle of the day when there's work I could be doing so you could pull a ventriloquist act with a plant?"  
  
'Marnela' started squeaking again. "'What do I have to do to prove I'm sentient? Sing the Hymn of the Fayth?'" In tones not that far off from the ones Naaga produces when she's trying to sing two octaves too high for her range, the cactus began squealing out the melody to the Hymn of the Fayth.  
  
This was a little too creepy for my taste. "Okay, okay, okay, so you really are a talking Cactuar. Cactus. Whichever," I said, mainly to make sure it--Benzo--she?--didn't decide to use 1,000 Needles on me to prove that even cacti can get insulted. "Are you the only one?"  
  
Benzo shook his head, but Marnela was already talking. "'Of course not. We all speak the Cactuar language. I just happen to understand yours as well. Actually, I was the one who asked Benzo to come. We of the Cactaur Nation need your help.'" Benzo broke off and looked at Marnela. "Are you sure we should be doing this before we establish formal diplomatic relations? We haven't sent an official ambassador out here or anything."  
  
Marnela started talking, and Benzo listened intently. "What'd she say?" I asked. Was I actually buying this stuff?  
  
"She said that we could do that later; this was more important. Apparently she's felt some kind of large fiend presence in the desert lately. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but...a swarm of something, or maybe...what?" He stopped to listen. "...a big monster? Three heads? It seems kind of farfetched, but these days I suppose anything is possible."  
  
"We can barely handle our own camp, Marnela. How the hell are we supposed to deal with fiend problems too?"  
  
Squeak squeak. "'It doesn't have to be done right away. We have some time left, and when they come I can hold them off for a little while. When my strength fails, the Ten Gatekeepers will be able to protect us for even longer. But sooner or later, something must be done. You must be on guard every minute. This desert holds more power than you know.'"  
  
"I spent two decades of my life at Home," I shot out before I could stop myself. Who knew where 'Nhadala' was supposed to have lived when she was a kid--probably nowhere near where Benzo or any of the others had been. "I know what the Sanubia Desert's like."  
  
The squeaking grew to a fever pitch as the arms of the Cactuar quivered. "'My child,'" Benzo translated, "'you have so much to learn. You claim to know the very nature of the desert sands and yet you did not even know that Cactuars talk.'"  
  
"Hey! Hey, slackers!" came a nasally mechanical voice from the direction of the hover. My head snapped around so fast I nearly gave myself whiplash. It was Picket. "Get back to camp already! There's a problem!"  
  
"What problem?!" I demanded in a yell.  
  
"Just get back!" And the thing shot off.  
  
"Come on, Benzo, we'd better get a move on. Could be serious." I cracked my knuckles. "Bye, Marnela. We'll be back." She squeaked one more time and fell silent. Benzo and I raced back to the hover and took off.  
  
*****  
  
I was on pins and needles for the entire flight back, and I nearly crashed the hover more than once because my hands were so tense that I had to take Rin's two deep breaths and count to ten about five times. Apparently no one was dead or Picket probably would've mentioned it, but anything short of that could've happened. No one said anything and the silence except for the dull whirr of the engine was killing me and when Benzo hit the windshield wiper button by mistake I was so startled our altitude soared fifty feet and then dropped a hundred.  
  
I was on the ground before the engines were even off, looking around for the crisis. Dnac rushed up to me. "Nhadala," he panted, "it's almost noon. The freight hover shoulda been here hours ago, and we haven't seen hide nor hair of it."  
  
Right away I stopped dead, looking for something to throw. Slowly, I turned toward him and stared menacingly at him before I lost it and yelled, "You brought me back here in a blind panic because your damn shipment of canned baked beans hasn't arrived yet?! What are you idiots doing around here, still playing Hearts and getting drunk?! Get back to work and don't waste my time like this!"  
  
No one moved. "Nhadala," Redeci said quietly, "there's a massive sandstorm coming in from the north."  
  
"We think maybe the hover got caught up in it on its way from Djose," Jock explained. "Amateur pilots, y'know, it can get dangerous out there."  
  
Cred. Of course something like this would happen on my first day. I ran a hand through my sandswept hair and tried to decide what I was supposed to do here. "Does anyone have a radio?" I asked meekly after a minute.  
  
"I have the emergency commsphere," Goma answered, running to get it and hand it to me. I took it and flipped it on. The default connection was apparently Djose, so I was dialing within ten seconds and had a tech on the phone in twenty. About ten minutes--of course, like Gippal would rearrange his schedule for anything--after that, I had Mr. Smooth on the line and asked him what the hell had happened to the freight hover.  
  
"Hey, I'm not sure," he said casually, like he was telling me that he wasn't sure whether the Beasts or the Fangs were gonna win the exhibition match on Thursday. "We got a distress call around eight-thirty AM. Since then, nothing. You guys had any problems with sandstorms today?"  
  
I brushed another renegade lock of hair away from my goggles and looked off into the distance. A large spiraling cloud of dust was rising just over the horizon line. "Yeah," I replied.  
  
"That might be your problem. Look, I'm not an expert, but I hear those things move pretty fast. If I were you and you're in the way, I'd get your butts outta whatever expanse you're in right now and head to the safest place you can get."  
  
"But what about our freight hover? We're dead in the water unless we can get some equipment and diggers out here!"  
  
"Those're the breaks, sweetheart. Why don't you cover your ass and then we'll do lunch sometime, okay? Buh-bye."  
  
Oh, no way, it was not possible that he was doing this to me. "Gippal?! GIPPAL?! Get back here!" I shouted at the top of my lungs. But it was hopeless. He was already gone. I tried calling back three times, but the hassled tech informed me with increasing levels of annoyance and then outright hostility that Mr. Gippal had gone out for the day. Thanks for nothing, you jerk.  
  
Redeci was tapping me on the shoulder. "Uhm...Nhadala? What are we going to do?"  
  
I turned to her. "About the freight hover?"  
  
"No." She shook her head and pointed. "About that."  
  
The sandstorm was rising quickly now and getting larger almost before my eyes. "You guys've been here a while," I snapped to the team. "How long do we have before it gets here?"  
  
"Maybe ten minutes," Nedus answered.  
  
I literally felt the blood drain from my face. Tyssed, we were screwed. "All right," I ordered, speaking without any benefit of thought whatsoever, "We don't really have a choice here. Load whatever you can carry onto the hovers within the next fifteen minutes, or we leave it behind. We're relocating to the Western Expanse."  
  
"What do we take?!" Tuc cried desperately. It might have been the first time I actually heard him say something.  
  
"Get the food and blankets first. Equipment shelves and that tent second, one of the living tents and the cots third. We'll grab the second residential tent if we have time. Right now we've just gotta move!"  
  
I darted into the second tent to grab my gear bag and then into the storage tent, where I started cramming every empty compartment in my bag with all the cans it could hold. When it was stuffed, I grabbed two of the plywood boards that were serving as artifact shelves and raced out to the hover I'd used earlier that morning. The cargo space was almost nil, but I managed to fit the boards in the back and dump the bag out on the floor. Cans rolled all over the inside of the hover, but none of them fell out and in either case I was already gone.  
  
The three brothers had the last of the food and the boards inside the second hover when I got back, and Jock and Goma were dismantling the equipment tent. I dashed over to help Redeci and Benzo with the larger living tent. Out of the corner of my eye I could see the storm getting larger and larger as it neared the camp. How much time did we have? I glanced frantically at my watch. Four minutes.  
  
We almost ripped the canvas in our hurry to get the tent down and--the hardest part--load it into the last hover. Hovers are pretty light craft that are supposed to be used for passengers. As a result, their cargo holds are tiny--dammit, that's what freight hovers are for! Why hadn't anyone left us heavier transport in case of an emergency? Gippal must have had even less idea about what we were in for than I had.  
  
"Nhadala, the last tent!" Redeci called over the roar of the wind, which was getting almost deafening now.  
  
"We don't have time!" I yelled back. "Get in the hover and let's get out of here!" I practically launched myself into the pilot's seat of the first hover and she, Goma and Benzo raced in after me. Jock, Nedus, and Dnac had already taken off in the second one, and the other two brothers stuffed themselves and Picket in the third and blasted into the air.  
  
"All right, people, hang onto your goggles!" I shouted against the wind, slamming the accelerator pedal all the way to the floor. We lurched violently.  
  
"Nhadala!" Goma bellowed right into my ear. "Hurry!"  
  
I shot a rapid glance back. We were the last of the three hovers in the air. The sandstorm was right behind us. As I watched, it blazed into the camp. The canvas and poles of the last tent went flying in all directions. One of the poles hit the ground from maybe two hundred feet up and literally bent in half. In a couple seconds, that could be us, except that we'd hit the ground and explode on impact. "Come on, GO!" I cried at the engine. Finally we lurched again and shot forward along the sand. I banged down with one gloved fist on the altitude control until we were up in the air and tore out of the claws of the sandstorm like a One-Eye out of hell. 


	7. Tempered Will

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Nice early-morning update for you before I head for Megacon (I'm cosplaying Lady Luck Yuna today). Anyway, Nhadala's pretty traumatized right now, so now would be a bad time to sue her for copyright infringement, you follow?  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 7: Tempered Will  
  
**********  
  
We raced the sandstorm to the sound of a struggling engine and adrenaline pounding in four pairs of eardrums all the way to the border of the Western Expanse, when it finally died down and we ducked ahead. I had no idea where the others were--or even whether they'd made it out--so I just had to hope they'd see where I was going and follow my lead.  
  
"Goma," I asked when I'd inhaled enough air to speak after holding my breath for maybe ten minutes, "where's the best place in the Western Expanse to set up camp? Somewhere safe, please."  
  
"Not far off the center," he replied instantly. "It's sector B5 on the map. Potential of a sandstorm forming there is virtually nil, according to our current data, and fiend activity is pretty low. In addition to that, there are several large objects--I'm not sure what they are; Picket said either machina or buildings--that could serve as shelters."  
  
"Sector B5 it is." I grabbed the joystick and then stopped. "What the hell is that?"  
  
Smoke was rising from a small pile of what looked like machine wreckage a short distance from the border. I could see the fires, although they were pretty dim.  
  
"That would be our freight hover," Benzo replied softly. "They must've gotten blown off course and crashed there."  
  
"Oh..." I breathed. How well were those things manned? I couldn't see anyone down there. Just great.  
  
I shook my head violently to clear it. Nothing I could do about it--my job right now was to deal with the living. "Uhm...any landmarks that'll help us find where we're going?"  
  
"We should probably get Picket to download that map of yours and install it in the main computers of the hovers--we could do things by autopilot that way," he mused. I looked at him. "Oh, right, right. Go straight for a while and then hang a slight right when I tell you to."  
  
"Gotcha." I backed off the throttle until we were comfortably in cruising speed and leaned back. "Redeci, as soon as we land, we'll give the others two hours to arrive. After that, whether they're there or not, you need to start cataloguing what we have left and making a list of what we need from the next freight hover. If you can, categorize it by what's most important and work from there."  
  
"Yes, ma'am," she replied quietly. I'd just ordered her to do Nedus' job and we both knew it, but her guess as to whether or not we'd ever see him again was as good as mine.  
  
"You can take that right now, Nhadala," Goma told me, snapping me out of Lala Land. "See where those half-buried buildings are?" I sighed and tapped the joystick to one side, starting to take our altitude down. At least Jock was an effective teacher. I was starting to figure this thing out.  
  
The landing was borderline smooth this time, which was good, because otherwise the food cans on the floor would have jounced around and broken all our toes, and no one was really in the mood for foot trouble on top of all our other problems. I felt like getting set up, but eventually I realized that there was nothing to set up. At least Goma still had the emergency commsphere, so if no one else showed up at least we had a shot at being evacuated, but that and the food were about the only things on our side. I knew the guys in the second hover had taken the rest of the cans, but Tuc and Dnac would starve unless they found us. Then again, that was based on the assumption that they were still alive anyway...  
  
"Nhadala," Redeci reported, tapping me on the shoulder. "It's only been about fifteen minutes, but I've catalogued what we have. Right now our stock is as follows: twelve cans of food, about half the boards, the emergency commsphere, a map of the desert, and one hover, plus whatever you had in your bag."  
  
"A handheld sphere recorder, a beach towel, and half an energy bar from the cafeteria in the Luca Stadium," I told her ruefully without thinking. Please, no one ask me what I was doing at the Luca Stadium.  
  
"Well, then, we're really not in terrible trouble here," Benzo piped up, coming over and sitting down on the sand next to us. "We don't have any nails or anything, but we could prop the boards up against the hover to shelter ourselves from the sun, and maybe stretch the towel across for some shade. I have the knife, so at least we can eat. If we have to, we can burn one of the boards for a fire."  
  
"Twelve cans," Goma said thoughtfully. "There are four of us. If we keep eating the way we have been--one can per person per meal--that'll last us until lunch tomorrow."  
  
"You think a freight hover can get here that fast?" asked Redeci.  
  
"Hang on, people," I said. "We're talking like we're the only ones out here. If the others show up and they have some more food and the two tents with them, there's no reason to evacuate." Actually, I would have sold my blitzball to get the hell out of there that second, but I was worried that even if I made it out, Gippal would just send me straight back in. There was no point in even trying to get all the sand out of my pores if I was just gonna have to do it all over again. I was stuck.  
  
"So, then," Benzo said, standing up and picking up a couple of boards, "we wait."  
  
*****  
  
It took us another fifteen minutes to get our makeshift shelter set up. Redeci and Goma were sprawled inside the hover with their faces pressed against the air conditioner vents like they were long-lost lovers. Which left me stuck under three boards and a towel in the middle of the desert with Benzo, who was keeping himself amused by playing with the drawstrings lacing up his crazy jumper thing and conjugating irregular verbs in Old Guado.  
  
I was in a bad mood. An hour and a half to go before I'd have to call Gippal again. If no one else had showed up by then, we wouldn't have any choice but to evacuate. Why, why, why, had I decided that my calling this week was to help the Youth League? Why hadn't I just given the mob in the DorkDorm the finger and gotten my double cheeseburger at Mitza's? Why hadn't I kept my big mouth shut about politics during the interview with that twit Shelinda? Why didn't stupid stuff like this ever happen to Miyu or Rin or someone? And speaking of Rin, why was he so freaked out about--oh, *shit.* All of a sudden I put it together.  
  
Naaga was with Naida.  
  
Naida was at Djose.  
  
Djose was where Gippal was.  
  
Gippal was with Naaga.  
  
I was never gonna hear the end of this one.  
  
I slumped against the side of the hover for about half a second until I realized it was still red hot, and then I curled up in the sand and covered my ears with my gloves to try to drown out the sound of Benzo counting in ancient Ronso and trying to remember the word for "fourteen." Then I realized that a forewoman, especially one who was supposed to be tough like me, probably shouldn't be nestled into the fetal position in the sand, so I sat up and sulked.  
  
*****  
  
An hour later, my mood had worsened severely. I was in the middle of a mental blitzball match against the Guado Glories, but even pummeling some sorry blue ass inside the sphere wasn't doing any good--we were losing the match anyway because the morons kept passing instead of breaking tackles, plus Wakka kept leaving the sphere because he said he was about to be a father. When I got out of the sphere, all the water in the shower was cold, and then I went to get a burger at Mitza's but the line stretched all the way across the ocean to Kilika Port and Gippal was in the front and kept laughing at me...  
  
When I woke up I realized that there was probably a direct correlation between the increasing frequency of the appearance of that burger in my mind and the increasing volume of the growling of my stomach. The end of the dream, wherein I'd jumped on Gippal and started squeezing his throat with a blitzer's grip, trying to make him give me his french fries, was definitely a sign that I had too much pent-up stress and hostility in my life and I needed to go on a long vacation from the desert--in Luca. If I couldn't be back home, I decided, the next best thing to do would be to watch the spheres I'd shot of the gang in Besaid a few days ago, but then I realized with annoyance that while these rocket scientists might believe that I was just a really big fan of Linna's fashion sense, carting around a sphere with her boyfriend, sister, and blitz coach on it might be enough to convince them that I was just a little more than I claimed to be. Then I realized that I was thinkin in run-on sentences and that actually realizing that meant that Benzo was probably getting to me.  
  
Auugggh. I really needed some coffee.  
  
*****  
  
Twenty minutes after that, my bad-mood grumblings and violent pipe dreams were interrupted once again, this time by the growling of engines. Right away I sprung into high gear, crashing my head into the towel and sending it fluttering to the desert floor. I dashed out of the makeshift shelter to see the two missing hovers touch down.  
  
"Where have you *been* for two hours?!" I demanded, dispensing with all that I'm-glad-you're-alive crap.  
  
Jock flicked distastefully at a speck of sand lingering somewhere in his shock of blond hair. "Oh, we found you guys right away. But then *this* wonkhead," he gestured with his middle finger at Tuc, "told me he could make it ten times around the island before I could. Such a challenge must not go unmet."  
  
I tried valiantly to control my fingers, which were twitching in a dangerous manner. "If you guys were getting paid anything," I choked out through my tightening throat, "you're not now."  
  
Nedus must have sensed the storm coming. "So," he put in hastily, "why don't we get the tents set up again here, and then I'll start the inventory."  
  
"I'll help," Redeci volunteered.  
  
"Guys, you mind helping me with the tent over here?" I called to the Brothers Three. To their credit--maybe they wanted their salaries back--they sprinted over to the third hover and started dragging out poles and canvas. It took us about three minutes to pitch the tent, and by the time we were done Goma and Jock were setting the boards up in the other one and Nedus and Redeci had finished the inventory.  
  
"Okay, boss," Nedus called, coming over. "The next hover wasn't due for another three days, but maybe you can get Djose to send us something. The first things we're gonna need are a new tent, a couple of spare energy cores, some more food, and please, for the love of Rin, get them to ship some AC units. We're dyin' out here."  
  
"I hear ya," I replied as the sweat trickled down my back. This was no way to beat up a blitz uniform. I'd have to ask Gippal for some new clothes, too. "All right. Let me go get the sphere from Goma and I'll make that call."  
  
This time all I had to do was glare and the tech went scrambling to find Gippal. He strode into the temple, profoundly annoyed that someone was bothering him yet again. When he saw who it was, though, the impish grin spead back across his face. "Hey, how's it goin'? You look a little worse for the wear. Don't they have showers out there?"  
  
I could not believe I was doing this. "Get me outta here, Gippal."  
  
"Who are you kidding? You're the one that wanted to help the Youth League."  
  
"I'm sure Nooj can find me a cushy desk job somewhere--maybe the one you're doing."  
  
"No can do, cfaadraynd. You're just gonna have to tough it out."  
  
I pushed my goggles up onto my forehead and stared into his eyes as hard as I could through a cheap emergency commsphere. "All right, Gippal, what'll it take to get you to throw some muscle around with Nooj? Money? Food? I'll hook you up with my sister. C'mon, she's a babe." This was not exactly a lie.  
  
He yawned. "All things I could get easily on my own. Actually, that sister of yours has been running around here lately. She's working with our techs. You're right; she's a nice piece of work."  
  
The growl was rising in my throat. "You lay a hand on her and you won't have any hands left."  
  
"It isn't the hands that do the laying, but I'll lay off. I'm holding out for you anyway."  
  
"You're gonna be holding out a long time."  
  
He smirked winningly. "What a coincidence. So are you."  
  
He had the kind of look on his face that he gets when he's about to hang up on you and go surfing at Kilika Beach for the rest of the day. I panicked. "No, wait, look, don't hang up on me. The freight hover went down off the border of the Southern Expanse. When the storm dies down I'll send Jock out to check, but I'm pretty sure there are no survivors. We lost one of the tents and several cots and we're in desperate need of supplies here. How fast can you get another freight out here?"  
  
He actually looked at me with some semblance of seriousness and gave me a straight answer. "Depends when the storm slacks off. Remember we're using pretty light transport, even with the freights, so I'd say it takes about six hours to get to you from where we are, one way. Can you make it through the night on what you have?"  
  
I thought quickly. "One tent...it'll be pretty damn crowded, but we're not in danger of keeling over at any minute." We could check out those shelters, too.  
  
"Okay. Say I wait until dawn tomorrow--it's too late to send someone out today, 'cause Djose at night is even darker and more unpredictable than Djose during the day. I could get your supplies there around noon. Now, is that as good for you as it is for me?"  
  
I rattled off the list Nedus and Redeci had given me. "Get me that stuff and quit being intentionally obnoxious and we'll call it even."  
  
"How do you call that even?" he demanded, poise broken for a split second.  
  
"Because you've been trying to look down my uniform for the entire conversation, you loser. I figure you owe me something. Do we have a deal or not?"  
  
He laughed out loud. "You drive a hard bargain."  
  
"Part of my charm, Gippie."  
  
"You can say that again." He shrugged. "Okay, you got yourself a deal. If you weren't six hours away I'd shake your hand, but you'd probably try to kill me anyway. Anything else you need to know before I schlep off to do your bidding?"  
  
"Yeah. Are you *sure* you can't get me out of here?"  
  
The last sound I heard before the connection snapped off was his laughter ringing in my ears.  
  
**********  
  
Translations:  
  
cfaadraynd - sweetheart 


	8. Treasure Hunt

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Looks like a lot of sharp-eyed people noticed the shift in chapter names from dress spheres to garment grids--you got it right; there are a lot more to choose from and it's a little easier to fit chapter names to situations. Kudos to everyone who picked up on that. Please keep reading! ^__^  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 8: Treasure Hunt  
  
**********  
  
By 11:46 the next day, I was already pacing around camp like a madwoman, striding so fast I wore the sand down three feet in a figure-eight that took two days to blow away. Even if the freight made it there safely, "around noon" as defined by Gippal could mean anything from 11:30 until nightfall.  
  
"Nhadala," Benzo suggested after a while, mainly because he was the least likely person in camp to get his head bitten off for trying to talk to me while I was stressed out, "maybe you should calm down a little."  
  
"You're kidding, right?" I snapped. "How am I supposed to calm down when--hey, there it is!" A medium-sized craft that looked something like a normal hover might if it got pregnant was settling down not far from the tents. I snapped my goggle strap to make sure my eyes were covered and charged straight into the dust cloud. By the time I stopped coughing, it had cleared and the pilot, dressed in the typical aviator's cap and green scarf of the Mi'ihen hover operators, had jumped out of the cockpit and opened the cargo hold up.  
  
"Hi there," she greeted me. She seemed to be in pretty good spirits. "I'm Sanna, nice ta meetcha! Looks like I'm gonna be your normal freight pilot from now on."  
  
"Nhadala. I'm the forewoman." I almost blitz-bowed, then caught myself and shook her hand. "Whatcha got for us?"  
  
"Gippal sent the usual, plus everything you asked for and a little extra--he said to tell you he was still getting the better end of the deal, whatever that means." She grinned knowingly, like she was used to Gippal's exploits. "He wanted me to take a look at your emergency sphere, by the way. Said something about an upgrade?"  
  
"Yeah, sure. It's sitting on one of the shelves in the first tent over there; go take a look. Hang on a sec and I'll get this unloaded while I'm at it," I told her, then called over my shoulder, "All right, people, the freight's here! You want it, come get it!" The team swarmed out of the woodwork and was crowded around the back of the hold in ten seconds flat. "Okay, Benzo and Nedus, I want you two to get the food set up in the back of the storage tent, and you three grab the extra tent and then come back for the cots. Jock come back yet?"  
  
Redeci shook her head. "He and Picket are still out scouring yesterday's freight."  
  
"Okay. What else do we have here?" I climbed into the hold and looked around. "Great, he sent some barbed wire. Redeci, you and Goma surround the camp with this. I want a rough circle, maybe thirty yards in diameter. Make sure it holds." I grabbed the wire fencing and handed it out to them as the pilot returned. "What *is* all this stuff, Sanna?"  
  
"Couple'a AC units here," she replied, tapping a couple of small silver rectangles. "Set 'em up in the backs of the tents. Annnd..."  
  
"Gippal, darling, love of my life, you sent us a portable toilet and a shower!" I cried, pumping my fist. "I never thought I'd be so happy for a cheap plastic cubicle. When the guys finish up with the tents I'll get them to help me carry these out back."  
  
Sanna was picking up bags and handing them out to Benzo, who'd just jogged back. "The rest of this stuff is mostly small--you got a lot of mechanical stuff like hammers and nails, some energy cores, and then some little things like soap. In the food shipment I got that dried fruit and jerky your translator asked for."  
  
"Nice work," I told her. "Thanks. We'll appreciate your efforts every time we take a shower."  
  
"No problem. That everything?"  
  
"Think so. Oh, hey, guys, help me grab these." I waved Ihu, Tuc and Dnac over. "Here, mebbe if we turn them on their sides we can get them out behind the tents." Ihu came around and picked up one end of the portable shower stall. I hooked my fingers under the other end and we stumbled and grunted our way to the far side of camp. Sanna had slammed the hold doors shut and climbed back into the cockpit when I brushed my gloves off and headed back toward the freight. "I'll be back on Saturday," she called.  
  
"See you then!" I shouted back as the twin propellers began spinning and sputtered into a sandy blur. It was kicking up dust into my face; I jogged back to where the others were standing until the thing took off and vanished in the cloudless blue sky.  
  
*****  
  
"So, what now, fearless leader?" Nedus asked.  
  
I shrugged. "Wait until Jock and Picket report back in. As soon as they get back, I think I'll head out on survey. Goma, what do you know about the Eastern Expanse?"  
  
"It exists," he replied simply. "That's about it. More fiend activity, sandstorms moderate. All those mongrels running around make it pretty dangerous, though. Ever been eaten alive by a Sand Worm?" I shook my head. "You don't want to be."  
  
"Sounds like my kinda place," I replied. "So, who wants to be the first one to try out that brand-new shower of ours?"  
  
Seven hands shot into the air. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a hover swooping in for landing. "Okay, you guys have a Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament and figure that out while I go see what Jock figured out, sound good?" I dashed off before anyone could argue.  
  
Jock got out of the hover at about the same time I made it over to him and shook his hair out. "I found it," he reported grimly. "Thing was totally mangled. I couldn't salvage much except three cans of food and a couple Al Bhed primers--not like there's anyone out here to teach Al Bhed to except the fiends."  
  
"Any survivors?" I asked.  
  
Just then, Picket zoomed by about two inches in front of my face and zinged in circles around me. "Greenhorns in sector B3!" it piped up gleefully.  
  
"Shut up," Jock told it, then to me, "No sign of the pilot--looks like it crashed nosefirst, so he's probably underground. There were a couple passengers, none of whom made it. I, uhh...well, I dragged 'em out, made a fire. Burned 'em, you know how we've always done it. Scattered the ashes off the propeller on my way back."  
  
Damn. He might be a hotshot, but at least he was human. Not many people would have taken the time to bury a couple of total strangers in the middle of nowhere. "Thanks, Jock," I said quietly. "You did the right thing."  
  
He was scuffing his boot on the ground, looking a little embarassed. "Yeah, well...I did find one guy that was okay. He's got some minor burns--Nedus knows some basic medicine; he can treat that--and he's half-starving, but otherwise he looks all right."  
  
"Digger?"  
  
"Greenhorns in sector B3!" Picket whined again. I slammed one fist backward, hoping to catch it. I missed.  
  
"Nope, merchant," Jock answered. "First thing he asked me when I pulled him out was whether I wanted to buy a Fiery Gleam."  
  
"He said no. But maybe you do, ehm...?" came a voice from the cockpit of the hover. I looked over and saw a man in a long robe and a turban getting out.  
  
"Nhadala," I told him. "You have a name?"  
  
He bowed. "You may call me simply 'The Merchant.' I have arrived to peddle my wares among your diggers."  
  
"You're lookin' at 'em," I snorted. "Try your luck at the Oasis." He merely smiled and held out a bottle of blue liquid that looked like a Potion. "I'm warning you, I'm not a bleeding heart case like--ahh, screw it. Here!" I snatched the bottle away from him and handed him 50 gil. "And that's the last you're getting outta me, ya bloodsucker. Jock, go get him fed and cleaned up before he cons me into buying the whole damn stock." And with that, Nhadala the Curmudgeon slunk off toward the center of camp, where the Rock, Paper, Scissors tournament was still in full swing.  
  
"Okay, people, change of plans!" I announced. "Ihu, Tuc, and Dnac, you three are on duty this afternoon. We've gotta get this digging done somehow, so until we get someone to do it, it's a chore like everything else we do around this dump. Follow the rotation charts. When they get back, whoever's next heads out. Follow Picket's instructions and start looking in the Western Expanse. And Nedus, go check out those buildings on the edge of camp and find out whether they're liveable. If they are, we're movin' in. Got me? Great. The rest of you go back to what you were doing." I turned and then paused. "And while I'm at it, where the hell is Benzo?"  
  
*****  
  
I consulted the map for the fourth time in the last three minutes and pressed the joystick in a different direction. "This *is* the right way, ain't it?" I asked Benzo, who was once again strapped into the passenger's side seatbelts leaning over like he was the king of the world.  
  
"Yes," Picket assured me. "Stop being so worry-warted, sweetcakes."  
  
"Who asked you, circuithead?" I hissed as I brought the altitude up another two hundred feet.  
  
"He's right, Nhadala," Benzo said patiently. "And don't say 'ain't.' It's not a word. You mean 'isn't.'"  
  
"Dammit, Benzo!" The dashboard was taking a real beating this trip.  
  
"You probably shouldn't curse so much, either. It's the sign of a small vocabulary."  
  
"Benzo?"  
  
"Yes?"  
  
"Ever been kissed?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Wanna start with that sand dune over there?!"  
  
He shut up.  
  
"There!" Picket started whirring. "Take it down, chief, this is the Eastern Expanse."  
  
I glanced back at it, irritated. "Why take it down? I just want to check the place out."  
  
"No sandstorm activity, low fiend activity, and I'm picking up readings from an artifact down there. Pretty small. Stone. I can't get a good estimate on the age, but I'd say it's at least a couple hundred years old."  
  
"Hmm. Well, if Gippal doesn't want it, I can set it into a necklace," I mused ironically. "All right, I got some time to kill. Any objections, Benzo?"  
  
"Not a one. Perhaps it's a stone tablet. I wonder if any ancient civilizations on this island left records."  
  
"Were there any?"  
  
He spread his hands. "Who knows? Maybe this'll tell us."  
  
I took the hover down to the ground and tightened my goggles. "All right, Picket, gimme a map or something here."  
  
Picket swooped down and opened its central compartment to display a small sphere map. "The object I picked up is about twenty feet to your northeast. Be careful, though, it's hot out here. Without any protective gear or water, you have about sixty seconds to dig it up and get back to the hover before you collapse from heat stroke."  
  
I grabbed it--him?--Picket--and started walking in the direction it'd indicated. I could see where I was going; the large yellow X on the sphere screen was the artifact he was talking about. We must've looked completely idiotic--a machinized blender and a blitzer in heels tangoing through the middle of nowhere--but I got myself to the spot and dropped to my knees, using my gloves to sift through the sand until I hit something hard. I took one glove off and brushed more hot sand away until I came up with a small stone disk, roughly rectangular and about the size of my hand, with tiny holes in it.  
  
"Picket, what gives with this thing?" I asked.  
  
"I'll analyze it when we get back to the hover," it replied. "To which, by the way, you have twelve seconds to return before you pass out."  
  
I stood up and dashed, almost falling into the air-conditioned cockpit. When I'd cooled off enough to move, I wiped the sweat off my face, climbed all the way in and closed the door, and took off again.  
  
"Here. Take a look at this," I said to Benzo, handing the disk over. Picket dropped down to hover over the translator's shoulder and scan it. "I'm gonna do a quick flyby of the entire expanse and then head back. After the heat out there, I think I'm a little too tired to be doing this right now."  
  
The first things I noticed when we were back at cruising altitude were the dozens, maybe hundreds of machina scattered all over the desert in this expanse. "Wow, it's a machina graveyard," I mused. "This place probably has everything we're interested in and more."  
  
"At one time, it was probably our testing grounds," Benzo said. "Did you live at Home at all?"  
  
I caught myself and answered noncommitally, "Some."  
  
"Then you probably knew mechanics who worked there. They were trying to repair machina here--this is where most of our subs came from. They also developed small things for Home; uncomplicated stuff like electric lighting and microwaves."  
  
I nodded, but I was concentrating on the ground. Nothing else interesting goes on in the desert. I could see fiends roaming; they looked about as hot as I felt. Who knew Pyreflies were still affected by heat? I scrawled a couple of Xs onto the map where I thought some sites that might be worth checking out up close later were and then swung back across the middle of the desert toward camp.  
  
"No clue, Nhadala," Benzo said finally.  
  
"I've never seen anything like it either," agreed Picket. "Why don't you ask Gippal about it? In fact, you should do it now, because it looks like there's a storm coming in."  
  
"Right. I'll put that at the end of my mile-long to-do list. First thing up is taking a long, cool shower--waiddaminute. A storm? I hate storms." I jumped out of the hover--and froze.  
  
Standing in the middle of camp were two of the people in all of Spira I least wanted to see: the High Summoner Yuna and Aniki's little sister.  
  
Okay. Time to think up a really good cover story.  
  
Really fast. 


	9. Bum Rush

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
I don't think I own anything in this chapter that I didn't own before, but I do have a link to a really interesting story. I know there were a couple of people who thought the BicksonxLinna pairing was kinda weird, so maybe this'll float their boats instead. ^___^ It's really well-written, too. Go here: http://www.fanfiction.net/read.php?storyid=1781561  
  
But hey, keep reading this story too! ^___^  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 9: Bum Rush  
  
**********  
  
Yuna, Rikku, and some badass-looking chick I didn't know were striding up to me at an alarming rate of speed. I'd better say something. Quickly, I decided the best course of action was to keep doing what I'd been doing--pitch my voice a little higher and put everyone around me on the defensive from square one.  
  
"I'm busy, so make it fast, okay? I've got lots to excavate and no one to do it," I snapped in English as soon as they got within ten feet of me, hands on hips. I hadn't spoken in anything but Al Bhed for the last few days; I was surprised, even after two years of living in the outside world, that I could switch so easily.  
  
"Aren't you--?" Yuna began.  
  
Cut her off at the pass. "No. Do you want something or not?"  
  
"Yunie," Aniki's sister hissed in what she apparently thought was a whisper, "show her Gippal's letter!"  
  
"Uhm...I've got this letter." The ex-summoner reached out and handed me a folded piece of paper that looked like it had spent too much time in her ammunition clip. I unfolded it and read it.  
  
"Hey, gorgeous,  
  
If I know you (and I like to think I do, although nowhere near as well as I'd like to), your first instinct will be to send these lovely ladies packing so Cid's kid won't blow your cover. Don't. I know for a fact you guys are pretty hard-up right now. These three are only temps, but they're packing more firepower than anyone else I can get you at the moment. That Youth League of yours is really leaning hard on my ass for some weapons; if you don't start digging soon, you'll have a better chance of digging your way through the center of the earth and out through the other side to Luca than you will of getting a ride home on any of our hovers. Word has it there's a special assembly part Z we really need floating around somewhere in the Western Expanse. Get them in, get them out, get that part to me by tonight and I'll tell you exactly what I had Sanna do to your commsphere. Mwah!  
  
--Gippal"  
  
I muttered more Al Bhed curse words under my breath than I thought I knew in the next thirty seconds while I tried to decide what to do. On the one hand, shipping those three out would definitely be the easiest way to handle things. Maybe I could even sneak back to Luca on their airship. Then again, if I wanted a legit way out, I'd better let them in on this, and even I wasn't so heartless that I could leave Benzo alone with this crew of misfits again. If they were going to get anything done out here, they needed a strong presence, and like it or not, I was it.  
  
And what the hell had that jerk done to my sphere?!  
  
"Oh, so you're the new guys!" I smirked, sizing them up. The black leather one looked tough, but Rikku would get tired of working in the heat and pass out in seconds, even with extra gear. Yuna didn't look like she could take much more than Rikku, but I knew from what I'd seen of her two years ago that she was stronger than she looked. They might not die. Either way, it was Gippal's problem, not mine.  
  
"That's us!" Rikku squealed.  
  
Yuna was still trying to be diplomatic. "Nice to meet you," she said quietly. Why did she have to do everything quietly these days? After all she'd been through, she was still so cheerful and innocent, I just wanted to shake her and scream, "LIVE A LITTLE, YA MORON!"  
  
Oh, well. To each her own.  
  
"Hmm. I guess the high summoner's hard up, too," I mused, then crossed my arms and looked at her haughtily. So this was what she'd been doing since she ditched Besaid. "Well, don't be expecting any special treatment."  
  
"Right!" she said, practically snapping to attention.   
  
I really, really, reeeeeally wanted to ask her about her boyfriend, but my spider sense was telling me this was not the time. "Let's get to it, then," I sighed, then snapped in Al Bhed, "Picket! Stop playing electronic Rock, Paper, Scissors with those dopes and get your mechanized butt over here!" Assuming it even had one.  
  
"Youuuuu called, Oh Madam Slavedriver?" it drawled, zipping over.  
  
"The only thing I'm gonna be calling is the garbage collectors to pick up your mangled remains if you don't start doing some work around here," I muttered. Yuna was only picking up a little of this, but Rikku was laughing, and I could tell from the way Badass' eyes left me when I glanced at her that she understood it too. Cred.  
  
I picked up the commsphere and held it out so they could see it. "Picket, gimme a map," I said. It grumbled something metallic and inaudible and zoomed up a few hundred feet to display a bird's-eye-view of the camp. "Here's where we are," I told the three of them, then raised an arm and waved to Picket. "I need Special Assembly Z," I called. It shot across the desert and stopped above a hover, where several of the guys were collapsed on the sand looking demoralized. Gurk. I hadn't even realized they were gone. "And here is where you're headed." Ehehehe.  
  
"Aww, but it's so far!" Rikku the Genius had apparently picked up on the exhausted looks on the faces of the wannabe diggers. She motored her hands in front of her body in supplication, which might work on her brother but did nothing to melt my icy heart.  
  
Accordingly, I totally ignored her. "We'll send you out there by hover. Go talk to the pilot about it."  
  
They trudged off, Picket in tow. Jock, who had apparently finished with the Merchant, shot me a whoa-momma look that Gippal would've envied as he escorted them into the hover. Yep, so much for his sainthood.  
  
Ten minutes later they were back with a large and complex-looking engine-type-thing. If I'd known it would only take them that long, I would have done it myself. "Special Assembly Z," Yuna announced.  
  
"Just what we needed!" I snapped, snatching it from her and hefting it between my hands. Just what I needed, more like it, so I could find out whether he just screwed with the color or put a bomb in that thing or what. What did Gippal plan on using this for, anyway? His food processor? "You're good," I added as an afterthought, because they were starting to look like the bellhop that hangs around in the hotel at Luca, showing you five times exactly how the lights work until you tip him.  
  
Rikku grinned and stretched her arms behind her head. "What'd you expect?"  
  
Tysh, what a twerplet. She was as annoying as her brother. "Don't let it go to your head," I sighed, rubbing my own. I was starting to want aspirin. "But you did do a good job." They were still standing there. Dammit, what were they, sphere hunters? I'd never met anyone more mercenary than the Machine Factionists, and these three were giving them a run for their money. "Here," I finally said in a tone of voice that suggested I was being patronizing toward small children or not-particularly-bright dogs. "Your reward." I dug a hundred gil out of my pocket and dropped it into Yuna's hand.  
  
"Yesss!" Rikku hissed, pumping a fist.  
  
"Thank you," Yuna said, bowing. Why was she bowing? I really wished she'd stop bowing. It was getting on my nerves.  
  
"Great. Take this to Gippal while your hands are wet." I tossed Special Assembly Z into the hands of Badass, who wasn't expecting it but recovered instantly and went back to leaning on her sword and glowering. I realized that I hadn't heard her say Word One since the three of them had showed up.  
  
I was definitely relieved when they left.  
  
*****  
  
"All right, Gippal, you'll have your part today. Now tell me what you did to my sphere," I snarled as soon as the commsphere connected to Djose about three minutes later.  
  
He smiled broadly. "I do you a favor and this is the thanks I get. You know that sphere recorder you gave Bickson for Calm Day? Your sister gave me the serial number and I rigged your sphere up so you can view his transmissions. And hey, you can rest secure in the knowledge that if it turns out he's cheating on you, I'll be waiting with open arms."  
  
"If you got enough time to keep your arms open that long, you can damn well come out here and do your digging yourself," I growled, then took the sticks and nails out. "I appreciate it, though. Uhm...thanks."  
  
"No problem. If you really wanna show your gratitude, though, I can book the hot springs on Mt. Gagazet for Saturday night..."  
  
"Sounds great. I'll bring my blitz gear and we'll work on your game. Sounds like you could use a little work on defense, since all you know how to do is MAKE PASSES," I shot back brightly.  
  
"Temper, temper."  
  
"Mmm. Hey, I found something in the desert while I was digging today and no one here knows what it is. Ever seen anything like it?" I held up the stone disk.  
  
He leaned forward to examine it with his good eye (actually, I firmly believe to this day that both his eyes are probably good and the eyepatch is just an affectation to impress moronic women with his manliness, but whatever). "Yep. You got yourself a garment grid."  
  
"A whaa?"  
  
"Garment grid. You ever used a sphere grid in combat before?" I nodded. "Those babies are pretty much obsolete now, although a couple people still use 'em. But these are experimental--a lost technology that some kid called Shinra of the Gullwings has figured out how to revive. Like sphere grids, these things use the power of spheres to help the user learn abilities. You still have that sphere camera of yours?"  
  
I dug around in my bag and held it up. "Yeah."  
  
"What've you taken so far?"  
  
I tried to remember. "Shots of Bickson, Rin and Naaga on Calm Day, and a couple days ago I took another clip of Miyu."  
  
"I'll have to get back to you on Bickson and Rin, but you can use the other two as dresspheres. Take out the one with Naaga in it and load it into one of the holes in the grid." I shrugged, took the sphere out of the camera and set it in. "Now put your hand on it and hold it there until something happens."  
  
"Gimme a break; nothing's gonna--whaa?" There was a strange feeling like an electric current running through my body. It felt like a milder version of the sensation I'd gotten when I'd learned new abilities through a sphere grid. I closed my eyes against the light that shifted around me and waited to see what was going to happen.  
  
Something was moving around my legs. I wasn't clear on what was going on until I felt my thick gloves disappear and the shorts of my blitzball uniform split around my thighs.  
  
Immediately after that, I burst forth into spontaneous song.  
  
"A little bit of Gippal in my life! A little bit of Aniki by my side! A little bit of Bickson's all I need! A little bit of Botta's what I see! A little bit of--what the hell am I doing?!" All of a sudden it occured to me that I was flailing my arms around like an idiot (or a pop star; same thing) and belting out the lyrics to the most inane song I'd ever heard at the top of my lungs. My first thought was whether or not the others could hear me. My second thought was something along the lines of a wordless scream, because at that point I looked down and realized that I was wearing crazy ankle boots, an obscenely short neon blue canvas skirt, and a gray-blue halter top--refugees from Naaga's closet! I was also clutching a microphone.  
  
I could see Djose Temple in the background of the sphere, but no one was there.  
  
"AHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Gippal's voice burst out laughing and continued for several long and agonizing seconds before he finally stood up, tears in his eyes. Apparently he'd fallen over at the conclusion of my performance and collapsed in a fit of hysterical laughter. "Do that again!"  
  
"Not on your life," I huffed, all semblance of dignity completely gone. "What the hell just happened to me?"  
  
He was still laughing. Eventually he took several breaths and managed, "Most dress spheres...play on...hoohaha...the emotions of the person who recorded them. Since those...were...hahaha...all recorded by you...hee...I think it defaulted to...the image of the only female in... that recording." He tried to straighten his face out, failed, and cracked up again. "Man, that was priceless. 'A little bitta Gip-pal in my life!'" Now he was mimicking me in falsetto with the dramatic sweeping gestures of an idol singer.  
  
"Shut up and tell me how to change back already. I don't need a disguise this badly."  
  
He was almost calm now. "Okay. When you get a minute, take your camera and set it up so you're recording yourself. Just leave it on for a couple seconds, then load the sphere into the garment grid and change back the way you did this. You'll be back to your normal class."  
  
"Class?" I repeated.  
  
"Yep. That's how abilities are classified. That one you just used? At least at that moment, your sister's a Songstress. You, sweetheart, are definitely going to be a thief, especially with that reputation for Linna Unlocking of yours. I'm not sure about Bickson and Rin, but you can't use them anyway; the gender's wrong. Ship 'em over here on the next freight and I'll see if I can have our techs convert them into a format you can use." He paused. "Hmm, looks like you're getting a transmission from that spherecam now. I'll letcha go. And it's a pleasure doing business with you."   
  
I figured he was bluffing until the image on the sphere shifted. I was looking at the hill at the center of Besaid Island. 


	10. Seething Cauldron

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Yes, the mage is a lazy slacker-person and she's failing to update regularly like she should...I'm sorry. Anyway, I don't think I own anything new here, so please don't sue me--because if you do, at this rate the story will never get done.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 10: Seething Cauldron  
  
**********  
  
From the camera angle, I could see that Bickson was standing on the top of that hill--apparently he'd taken the Ancient Road from the beach. I could almost feel him leaning back as he walked down the steep hill toward the village. Several people were standing on that path, and as he got closer I could see that they were the Aurochs. They were tossing a blitzball around and cracking jokes with each other.  
  
"Aww, whattsamatter, Let?" Botta was taunting Letty when Bickson got within earshot, bouncing the ball off his head. "You're gettin' slow. Season's startin' soon, ya know?"  
  
"Yeah, like we're gonna be ready in time for the season with Cap'n LinLin gone and Cap'n Wakka back there pacin' like a Tonberry," Letty grunted as he dove for the ball and lobbed it back. "I can't do everythin'. We got enough problems just gettin' through training during the day; how're we supposedta try ta get anythin' done when that jerk's spendin' every damn day turning us into soldiers?"  
  
What?  
  
"Quit whinin'." Datto was still an agile forward; before Botta could react, he zinged in and snagged the ball. "We'll be lucky if we got a league to come back to, the way things are lookin' now. I hear New Yevon's stockpilin' weapons too. Maybe they'll come down here someday and blow all our heads off, ya?"  
  
Jassu stared at the kid like he was nuts. "Ya gotta be kiddin me, man. Ain't no way a buncha puffed-up priests are gonna come down here and mess with a buncha blitzers. Only thing we gotta do is deal with Beclem."  
  
"Only thing we gotta do is survive, brudda," Botta replied, walking over to put a hand on Keepa's shoulder. The goalie was leaning against a tree, looking worn out. "You okay there, kid?" Botta asked him.  
  
Keepa took a deep breath and closed his eyes. "Man, I wish Cap'n LinLin were here so we could get back in the sphere."  
  
I'm not sentimental, but I gotta admit I felt a physical twinge in my chest.  
  
"I've been looking for you guys," Bickson's voice said, breaking the flow of their conversation.  
  
Datto looked at him a little suspiciously. "What do you want, Goer? You come to hire Vilucha again?"  
  
Letty punched the baby of the team lightly in the shoulder. "Why don't you lay off, ya? That's Cap'n LinLin's guy, even if he is a Goer." Then, to Bickson, "You know where she is?"  
  
"That's what I came to ask you. Has she been by here in the last couple days?"  
  
"Nah." Botta shook his head. "We really wish she had, though."  
  
"Why's that?" Bickson asked.  
  
Jassu grimaced. "Because with her gone and Wakka fussin' over his kid, there's been no one around to train with us except--"  
  
"What are you doing standing around?!"  
  
"--him," the guard finished with a wince.  
  
The camera view shifted up as Bickson looked toward the village to see who was coming. The man was wearing a red and blue uniform and the metal half-face mask of the Crusaders; he was a bad-ass male version of Miyu. "I assume that the fact that you've got time for this idle chatter means that you've bulked up enough to be considered men instead of mice."  
  
"Who are you?" the Goer wanted to know.  
  
I couldn't see Testosterone-Pumped-Miyu's eyes, but I was willing to bet he was glaring at Bickson. "My name is Beclem. I've been sent by Youth League Headquarters to whip these spineless dogs into shape. Their training so far has been absolutely pathetic."  
  
"Pathetic enough to win the Cup for the last three years running, right?" Bickson snapped. I raised an eyebrow. Normally he would never have mentioned that; it was still a really sore point with him and he winced every time I brought it up. Maybe he was feeling defensive--or more likely he was like me and disliked the guy on sight.  
  
"The very sport of blitzball is pathetic. Real men shoot guns, not goals. These boys have never been trained--if you can even call it that--by anyone other than that idiot Wakka and some pathetic little girl."  
  
I was starting to notice a trend in Beclem's word choice here. Pathetic, pathetic, pathetic. You're the one who's pathetic, stomping around in your unstained uniform and your prissy mask with that red hair of yours while that 'little girl' is running around the desert digging up those damn guns of yours. Where do you think they come from, pal? Ugh, Benzo was getting to me; I had to stop noticing people's grammar. It wasn't until later that I realized that the fact that I picked up on Beclem's overuse of the word 'pathetic' was probably a good thing, since it was the only thing that kept me from going stark raving mad with anger.  
  
The guys were with him, though, so they had the luxury of doing that. "Don't you dare talk that way about Cap'n Wakka and Cap'n LinLin!" Keepa exploded. "They're not pathetic! They're much better coaches than you are!" I wanted to hug him. I wanted to run from a distance of twenty feet and jump on him and wrap my arms around him and then buy him a doughnut. Man, and these were the guys that two years ago were calling me 'Little Princess' and stealing my clothes while I was in the shower.  
  
There was a long, angry silence after this outburst, and suddenly the camera lurched as Bickson knelt and set it on the ground. He'd propped it up on a rock, so I was could see the cold fury in his eyes as he stood up again. I watched as he strode straight down the hill until he was toe-to-toe with Beclem. He had to look down to make eye contact. It occured to me that Beclem was about my height.  
  
Slowly and deliberately, Bickson spat, "Wakka's no idiot, but I don't really like him, so I could let that one slide. But that 'pathetic little girl' is one of the best blitzers Spira's ever seen. I have no doubt that if she were here, she'd haul off and kick your ass right now. Since she's not..." He left the threat hanging for a second, just staring through the hollow owl eyes in Beclem's mask. "I'll have to do it for her."  
  
I cheered. "Yeah, man! Why don't you beat his scrawny little head against a rock and tell Lulu to freeze it and feed it to her kid in a couple months!? Why don't you mash him into a pulp and paint the temple walls with him!? Why don't you--"  
  
"You think you can beat me, boy?" Beclem raged. Bickson stumbled backwards as the pair of handguns the Crusader threw at him hit his hands. Blitz reflexes alone kept him from dropping them and falling on his ass. "Prove it. Run the Gunner's Gauntlet. 500 points' worth of dead fiends. Seven minutes from now, you'd better be on the beach waiting for me, or I don't ever want to see your face around here again."  
  
Bickson's lips curled into a snarl. "Done."  
  
The Aurochs were glancing at each other, murmering. They were afraid of this gauntlet thing, whatever it was. Everyone was uneasy. When Datto picked up the camera again and aimed it up the hill, I could see why.  
  
"Begin!" Beclem's voice shouted. Bickson was standing on the top of the hill, the two guns clenched in his fists. About two feet away a Wild Wolf was standing on its haunches, growling as it lunged for him.  
  
Furiously, Bickson fired five shots with his right hand. The fiend collapsed in a burst of Pyreflies. The Goer ran, already targeting the next one.  
  
"C'mon, let's go!" Datto hissed to the others, racing off after him.  
  
I'd never seen Bickson furious before. I'd seen him laugh all the time, I'd seen him smirk more times than I could remember, I'd seen him kick himself when the Goers lost, and, once in a while, I'd seen a warm, real smile spread across his face. I'd never seen that famous wide mouth twisted up with rage or those deep blue eyes filled with--hate. He was moving now like he moved in the sphere, but harder, faster. He swung out over the Ancient Road and the falls, both guns blazing in the hands of a madman, fiends sprawling on the ground as the Pyreflies swarmed. If Besaid had ever had a pest control problem, it didn't anymore.  
  
The guys were running hard behind him to keep up. I wasn't sure what had happened to Beclem--chances were he'd lagged behind on the hill and was going to jump down from the bridge to the beach or something equally macho just to beat Bickson there. And I have no idea how many fiends died (again) at the hands of that blitzer. I only know that for seven minutes, I sat frozen in hell, because Bickson was shooting violently and getting gored by wild dogs, and I was totally helpless to do anything about it.  
  
Beclem, as it turned out, twisted his ankle trying to jump from the waterfall bridge and arrived at the shore several seconds after Bickson. By that time, the guys had calmed him (this would be Bickson) down enough to stop clutching the guns so hard his knuckles were white and the murderous gleam was draining from the sapphire eyes. "Good enough for you?" he hissed at Beclem.  
  
The ex-Crusader's nostrils flared, but he choked out, "I suppose so."  
  
"Good. Now that that's settled, I'm going to ask you a question, and I want a straight response sometime in the next three seconds: have you or have you not seen this woman in the last three days?" He hooked the fingers of his left hand around the gun triggers to free up his right, dug a sphere out of his pocket, and thrust it into Beclem's face. I could just make out the image of me inside. For a sec, I was worried it would be a picture of me grinning and flashing a blitz bow at the camera or something equally nonthreatening, but from what I could see it looked like it had been taken inside the sphere during a game. I hoped I was Nap Shooting someone.  
  
"I have not," Beclem responded tersely.  
  
"That's all I needed to know." Bickson put the sphere back into his pocket and dropped the guns to the sand. "Then I'm heading out. And...Aurochs? I know you probably hate my guts, but you want her back as much as I do. If you find her, let me know, okay?"  
  
"Sure thing, ya?" Letty told him.  
  
Bickson came over and took the sphere camera back, then walked down the dock to where the ferry was waiting. When he had one foot on the ramp, Beclem called out, "Who is she?"  
  
The Goer stopped and turned. "To you," he shouted back, "she's a pathetic little girl. To me..." He hesitated. "I think she's the love of my life."  
  
The screen went black. I have no idea whether I blushed, screamed in frustration, or threw the sphere against the wall first, but I'm pretty sure I did all three because Benzo told me that's how he found me about thirty seconds later--sitting alone in the darkened tent with my cheeks flushed red and my mouth hanging open, and the glass of the sphere scattered at my feet. I was still wearing Naaga's clothes.  
  
*****  
  
"So we have no emergency sphere," I told the others at dinner. I was back to the blitz uniform, but I was still in a bad mood.  
  
Benzo had been amazingly cool about the whole thing. He'd swept up the pieces of the sphere, kept everyone away from the tent until I could change back, and hadn't asked any questions. Now I was irritated at myself as well as the situation. That jerk Beclem was ruining my team, Wakka was doing nothing to stop him, and now my boyfriend was going around making bold declarations of undying love and I wasn't there to hear them. This was terrible. And without blitz training, we'd be sitting Chocobos when the season started. Tysh, tysh, tysh.  
  
"How'd that happen?" Jock demanded.  
  
"Faulty transmission," I replied, daring him to keep going.  
  
He took the dare. "Faulty?"  
  
"Like your head." I ripped off a hunk of beef jerky with my teeth and glared at him. "We needed a better sphere anyway; that emergency one was crap. I'll get Sanna to bring one next time she comes, or maybe someone who has one will turn up at the Oasis."  
  
"Speaking of the Oasis," Nedus cut in nonchalantly, "I was out there filling up the water tanks today and I found some strange stuff. An empty box of chocolate cream pie, a couple of spheres, and a bunch of fans with hearts on them."  
  
"Hearts?" Redeci laughed. "Sounds like the LeBlanc Syndicate to me."  
  
"The LeBlanc Syndicate?" repeated Tuc slowly. "Who's that?"  
  
"Sphere hunters, right?" his older brother put in.  
  
Redeci nodded. "Mmm-hmm. It wouldn't surprise me if they were here looking for a few spheres. I've heard she's Nooj's girlfriend."  
  
"This would be Nooj of the Youth League?" I blinked. "Whoa. He didn't seem like the type to me. From what I've heard about her, she's kinda...out there."  
  
Jock snorted. "In more ways than one. I'd like to take her for a ride or two in my hover, if you get my drift."  
  
I kicked sand at him. "Divert your blood flow back to your head for a second. This is serious. If they're doing any digging here, they might be finding parts we need. What happens if they take them or--worse--junk them? Someone's gonna have to head out there tomorrow and deal with them."  
  
"I wouldn't if I were you," Benzo warned me. "If the LeBlanc Syndicate's really out there, they're going to be armed for bear."  
  
"Hmm." I finished off the jerky. "In that case, let's hope a solution presents itself. To both problems."  
  
As it turned out, something did. 


	11. Tricks of the Trade

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Yeah, yeah, I know. --;; Ummm...I could make it up to you with some Rikku/Gippal fluff (or at least a parody thereof--check out "Blatant Fanservice"), but I think this fic will start moving a little more quickly now. Bear with me and don't sue me. It's worth it, right? ;;  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 11: Tricks of the Trade

* * *

The answer to all my questions came two days later in the form of the Gullwings--i.e. Yuna, Rikku, and Badass, who I assume had a name but I didn't know it because she never said anything and thus no one ever bothered to talk to her. As they were walking up, it occurred to me that Badass was carrying a very large sword, Rikku had a pair of wicked-looking blades gripped in her hands, and two guns were sitting comfortably in holsters at Yuna's side. The Syndicate was armed for bear, huh? These three were armed for Hrithmus. The plan started forming in my mind--get them to do the dirty work, and I'd have a pink-fan-free Oasis. And I wouldn't even have to change into a miniskirt and start singing to do it.  
  
"Oh, before you start digging..." I called to them as they made a beeline toward Jock, "I'd really like you to go check out the Oasis for me. Some strange stuff's been washing up there lately. I'd appreciate it," I said in a tone of voice that meant 'go do it now before I grow claws and gut you,' "if you looked into it."  
  
"Why us?" Rikku whined.  
  
I rolled my eyes, but luckily I had my goggles on. "You're armed. We're not. You want spheres that might be there. We don't. You're goody-goodies. We're not."  
  
"Hey, who's a goody-goody?!" the former high summoner demanded.  
  
I expected a catfight to break out, but instead Rikku turned to Badass. "Can you believe her?"  
  
"She'll get it eventually," Badass replied in a low, dangerous voice. It sounded like a threat until I realized that that was probably the way she always talked. She was like what I'd end up as someday if the chip on my shoulder got any larger and someone let me loose with a little black leather. "But why are you asking us to do this?" she asked, turning to me.  
  
I sighed and rubbed my temples, something that was becoming a major habit for me these days. Great. Just what I needed, opposition.  
  
"What's wrong?" Yuna actually sounded concerned. Goody-goody.  
  
"Nothing. I'm just tired." Okay, fine, I'd just play on Yuna and Rikku's sympathy and have them talk Badass into it for me. "We've been so shorthanded lately. I've been trying to send out the people we have, but we just can't get anything done without real diggers. So these same people are always around screwing things up--the other day Dnac came back with some chest he found and lost the key to! You're so lucky that the three of you are all alone on that airship and don't have to deal with problems like that." I was having a hunch here. Gippal had mentioned that Shinra, the tech whiz, was with these people. And he'd have commspheres. A plan was forming in my mind.  
  
"Oh, we're not alone!" Yuna burst out. "We have Brother with us, and Barkeep, and Shinra and Buddy too."  
  
Shinra.  
  
Yesssss.  
  
"Oh, wow. So I guess the high summoner has to deal with crap like this too," I laughed. The rapport-building was an essential part of the act. "But anyway, I really need you to help me out, just this once. I've gotta get this part out today, and there's no one else who can do it."  
  
"Then this is a job for the Gullwings!" the summoner cried. Yep, she was in. She looked like the ringleader; the others would have to listen to her.  
  
"Thank you so much," I gushed. Then, as an afterthought just in case they needed further prompting, I added, "Just so you know, there've been some unseemly characters showing up in the desert lately." I couldn't actually prove this, but Nedus's report seemed like it was good enough to go on, and I didn't want to be the one to handle it if he was right. "I'm thinking it might be that LeBlanc Syndicate I've been hearing about."  
  
Their ears definitely perked up. They were trying to be cool about it, but it hit me that there was something they wanted out of the Syndicate.  
  
"Well, I doubt that you'd have any problem handling them," I finished with the uppercut. If you want something done, the best way is to do it yourself. Failing that, the best way is to make someone else do it by exercising authority. Failing that, the best way is to con someone else into doing it. And the best way to do that is by stroking their ego 'til it hurts. "Just keep your eyes open."  
  
"We're on it!" Rikku cried, and the three of them charged off toward Jock without even waiting for Yuna to bow and say something goody-goody, kicking up a major dust storm that didn't settle until several minutes after they left.  
  
As soon as the hover was out of sight, I darted outside the ring of barbed wire and snuck onto their airship.

* * *

The Celsius was much higher-tech than the big hulking cargo craft we'd ridden on two years ago. It'd been built for speed, all red and chrome and slashing curves, and I couldn't see any weapons on it but I assumed they were probably there somewhere. The walls around me were humming, and I realized I'd entered in the engine room. From what I knew about salvaged Al Bhed aircraft, that put me at the bottom of the ship. I found the stairs and started climbing.  
  
I knew what I was looking for as I scanned the elevator panel. There must be a cargo hold somewhere, and inside said hold there must be something I could steal--preferably a commsphere, but maybe that whiz kid Shinra that Gippal had mentioned had some dress spheres lying around or something equally useful. Maybe some good food; I coulda killed for potato chips.  
  
But I wasn't finding a storage room listed on that elevator menu. There might be a closet or something in the cabin, but there would almost certainly also be at least one person there. If I got caught, that'd just force me into going to the bridge and talking to the captain anyway. So I decided to cut out the middle step and go with plan B: barge the hell in and deal with Aniki himself until I got my way.  
  
This may sound ruthless, but you gotta understand my state of mind at the time. I'd been living in a glorified crabshack for a week, with no contact with the outside world other than Sanna and Gippal, who didn't count on the grounds that they were both just as cracked as I was. I'd singlehandedly eaten more canned beans than I knew existed. I'd been hounded by sandstorms, incompetent nimrods, fiends, and dry skin. Getting a new commsphere wasn't just about irritating myself by watching what Beclem was doing to my teammates; not having one was a huge safety concern. And because Naaga and I had grown up on our own, sometimes a little petty thievery was the only way to survive when there was no way of knowing where our next meal was coming from. This kind of thing didn't really hurt anyone, and it was practically in my blood.  
  
Yeah, just keep telling yourself that.  
  
Because the main thing was that I really, really just wanted some normal food.  
  
The bridge bunnies consisted of Aniki, his old friend Buddy--who I was pretty sure neither Naaga nor I had ever dated, making him rare among the guys who had lived at Home, and who I was also pretty sure actually had a real name--and some kid in a Benzo-esque isolation suit. That must be Shinra, I reasoned. None of them, amazingly, noticed me. I swear this is true. Shinra was futzing around with a computer, Buddy had his face planted about half an inch from a handheld video game, and Aniki was cackling to himself a la Nav Guado about something. I kept hearing the word 'Yuna.'  
  
Aniki was facing directly away from me, which made it pretty easy to sneak up behind him and drape myself over his chair. "Been a while, babe. Miss me?" I hissed into his ear.  
  
He squawked and struggled, but I shook my head with a feral grin and slipped my arms around his neck--hard. Blitzers learn headlocks like this for rear tackles, but they come in handy outside the sphere too. "Unh-unh-unh," I cooed. "I think you can give me everything I need from right there."  
  
"Aniki, what's going on?" Buddy asked, finally noticing that there was someone else in the room.  
  
In the movies I would have been in Gunner form and casually whipped one arm over my head to aim at his, but as it was I couldn't free my arms and had to settle for looking menacing. "Buddy. Great. You look like a guy who knows his way around. Why don't you get me a spare commsphere and maybe some coffee if you got it?"  
  
"Why don't you tell me what you're doing here, and then we'll see," he suggested calmly. "Aren't you supposed to be missing, anyway? Or did you just pull another one of your disappearing acts?"  
  
"Actually, I'm supposed to be down there." I jerked my head at the front of the ship, indicating the camp. "Nice to meet you, by the way; I'm Nhadala. And no matter who you tell anything different to, they're not gonna believe you. I've got the papers to prove it."  
  
"Oh, are we getting held up?" Shinra asked, waddling over. "Cool. I wonder if she likes computers."  
  
"Shinra!" Aniki yelped.  
  
"Ooh, you're even better," I said, sizing the kid up. "Just the guy I was looking for. You must know where I can get a commsphere around here."  
  
He hesitated. "Actually, I hope to have a Spirawide network of them up and running soon. How many do you need?"  
  
"One should be great, unless you're handing out freebies."  
  
"I guess I could hook yours up a little early. You can be the beta tester. I'll go down and install one." And with that, he simply waddled out of the room like a warped Tonberry intent on its mission, totally unconcerned that in thirty seconds I could potentially turn his captain's face bluer than an Ice Flan.  
  
"That was anticlimactic," Buddy commented when the kid was gone.  
  
"About my food?" I gave Aniki's neck a friendly squeeze.  
  
"You smell good. Are you still wearing same perfume?" my darling ex asked in English.  
  
"Yc y syddan uv vyld, E'ja hajan funh banvisa. Yna oui cdemm cgesbehk uh dra crufanc?" I retorted.  
  
"That's all you want? A sphere and food? You're not going to try to get us to take you anyplace?" Buddy asked incredulously.  
  
I shrugged. "They'd just haul me back here anyway." Wouldn't surprise me if Gippal had had Sanna install homing devices in my spare chokers while she was at it. "Besides, I'm really not here to hurt you. I believe we can have a healthy exchange here. It'll be...our little secret. And in return, I won't tell anyone that Aniki has a crush on Yuna. And that he still watches chick flicks. My kid sister saw you sobbing in the front row at 'Windswept Kisses,' man."  
  
"Haha, seriously?" Buddy laughed.  
  
"Would I lie to you?"  
  
"YES!" Aniki screamed.  
  
"Okay, of course I would. Right now I'm not, though. She's got the spheres to prove it." This was definitely a lie. We hadn't even owned a sphere camera when that movie had come out in Luca, and if we had I doubted she would've wasted her film on Aniki acting girly (although she probably woulda called it 'sensitive' and 'sweet' and gone to put her arm around his shoulder and cry with him). But they didn't know that, and if they decided to call her and check I was sure she could bluff her way around it. She was related to me, after all.  
  
Aniki howled. "Buddy, get her whatever she wants!"  
  
Buddy was still snickering to himself. "You got it, captain." In five minutes flat I had a brand new commsphere, a spare medical kit, and all the potato chips I could carry. Sometimes crime really does pay.

* * *

Translations:  
  
"Yc y syddan uv vyld, E'ja hajan funh banvisa. Yna oui cdemm cgesbehk uh dra crufanc?" - "As a matter of fact, I've never worn perfume. Are you still skimping on the showers?" 


	12. Mounted Assault

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Bigger update just so everyone knows I'm alive, yay. This fic is long, though. --;; It seems like there's always something going on on Bikanel. Don't sue me now or I'll never get through it all...  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 12: Mounted Assault

* * *

"Nhadala," Benzo called, "we've got company."  
  
"Yeah?" I yelled back. "I'm on my way." Please, please be anyone other than Gippal.  
  
I jogged over to the gap in the barbed wire fence where Benzo was standing alone with his back to me. When I came around, I could see that he wasn't really alone; he was actually facing two bright green Cactuars. They looked like they were dancing, and I could hear them chattering away.  
  
Benzo turned to me. "They're saying that Marnela wants to see you again."  
  
I raked my fingers back through my bangs. They were sandy and stuck up almost straight afterwards. "Can it wait? I'm kinda busy here."  
  
The interpreter looked at the Cactuars, who started flailing around and chirping again. After a few seconds, Benzo looked at me and shrugged. "Apparently it can, but they wouldn't recommend it. She's very eager to open official diplomatic contact. Sometime soon we're going to have to find an ambassador; preferably someone who's affiliated with our operation but not on our payroll."  
  
"For what? Why can't you be the ambassador?" I asked.  
  
"They want someone who can represent us, but won't be overly partisan. At least, I think that's the idea."  
  
"All right, fine. Looks like the Gullwings are doing more scutwork in this operation than anyone else. Let's go see what Marnela has to say."  
  
Marnela looked glad to see me--at least, as glad as a Cactaur can look, which means she was sorta quivering and glowing more brightly than usual. And she talked like she was glad. "'It is good to see you again, Nhadala (and me too),'" Benzo translated. "'You have not come a moment too soon. The fiend beneath us grows ever stronger. The Ten Gatekeepers have left us to train, and without them, the barrier has weakened. Soon the full power of the fiend will be unleashed, and it will wreak its vengeance upon us.'"  
  
"Marnela, I can turn into a pop idol wannabe and produce a magical sword that I can't use. As far as I know, no one else in the camp is armed. How are we supposed to fight this fiend?" I sighed.  
  
She swished her arms together violently and chittered at me. "'It is not necessary,'" she said, via Benzo. "'You must find the Ten Gatekeepers scattered throughout Spira so that they may summon the Great Haboob.'"  
  
"The whaa?"  
  
"She's doing the cactus equivalent of rolling her eyes right now," Benzo explained. "She says, 'The magical barrier that will seal the fiend away.'"  
  
I looked at Benzo. "Tyssed. Who are we supposed to send, Picket? I can't leave this island, and we just can't spare any of the workers at the moment."  
  
"'It need not be done today. But please, you must hurry. If the fiend is freed, it will destroy us and come for you. Your lives as well as ours depend on its defeat.'" Benzo paused to listen. Marnela's tone had changed. "Oh," he said in a minute. "She's knows who's been camping out in the Oasis. 'They arrived here a week ago. They were not prepared for desert work--they were dressed all in hot outfits that hid their faces, and they brought with them strange mechanical snakes. No other equipment was brought, and they came on foot. These intruders used the snakes to begin digging in the ground. This was most dangerous, for they damaged the root structure of several of our number, which can be fatal to a cactus. I believe they were sphere hunters, but it would appear that they did not find that which they were seeking.'"  
  
"They wouldn't," I muttered. "When's the last time humans were in the Cactuar Nation?"  
  
"'A small group visited us two years ago, but other than that, I cannot say. None in my lifetime, which is to say the last few centuries or so.'"  
  
"Then they wouldn't find much." I was trying to recall history class when I was a kid at Home. We'd had to do a semester of Bikanel history. How long had this island been a desert? It had been more like Besaid or Kilika before that. Any sphere records here might have been made before the Zanarkand-Bevelle war, but I was pretty sure recorders hadn't been invented more than a century earlier. For most of the time I could remember from class, Bikanel had been pretty much empty except when the Al Bhed had lived there. What could there possibly be spheres of here?  
  
"'If you see them,'" Marnela was saying, "'please ask them to refrain from digging in this area.'"  
  
"I'm gonna ask them to refrain from digging in any area, from the Cactuar Nation to their vegetable gardens," I growled. "I thought sending the Gullwings out there would be enough to send them packing. Hey, Benzo, you up for a little deep frying?"  
  
"Why do I get a bad feeling about this?" he moaned, burying his face in his hands.  
  
I waved goodbye to Marnela and headed for the hover. "I dunno. Maybe you're smart."

* * *

I circled around once and headed back to the southern half the desert toward the Oasis. The hover barely managed to outrun a sandstorm as we crossed the machina graveyard to the east, but I was expecting it and swerved over the center of the island until we were safe. As we got nearer to the Oasis at the tip of the island, I could see that something was definitely going on there. I picked up on the color before anything else--bright magenta tents popping out against the gleaming white sand made the place a huge eyesore. I couldn't believe I hadn't seen this place sooner.  
  
"Oh, no," Benzo groaned as soon as they came into our line of sight. "It really is the LeBlanc syndicate. Looks like they've set up a camp of their own."  
  
I glared at the huge pink circus tents. "We have exclusive digging rights in this desert. Whatever they find here, we can legally confiscate."  
  
"Legally, yes, we can," he agreed, but I could already hear the 'but.' "Practically... well, we'd have to go through their goons."  
  
I shot a sideways glance at him. "You armed?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Get that way," I ordered, hooking one foot into the strap of my gear bag and kicking it into his hands. "There should be a garment grid and some spheres in there." I'd had to explain the whole system to him once he'd found me dressed up in Naaga's clothes, and once he'd gotten the hang of it we'd figured out that he was an Alchemist.  
  
"Well," he sighed after he'd found them and dug them out, "this is going to be a bit uncomfortable." I adjusted my goggles so the flash of light didn't hit me as hard, hoping that the sphere wouldn't default to Bickson's image, and if it did that I wouldn't have to explain it. When I glanced over, he was dressed like Rin. Luck of the draw.  
  
"Oh, so you do have a face. I wondered," I said. "You should work on that tan, though."  
  
"I look like Rin...a Gun Mage?" he was musing. "That's odd." I was still looking at his face. No, he definitely wasn't a kid. He had that kind of air, but he was probably about my age, early twenties. Not a serious looker, but his appearance matched his personality: pleasant and agreeable, with a sense of calm intelligence. It wasn't until the words 'Gun Mage' that I picked up on the large, very sci-fi-looking weapon he was holding.  
  
I reached over with one hand, keeping the other on the joystick. "Here, hand me that thing. The master's about to get to work." Somehow I didn't think Naaga's little pop-star pipe dreams were the kind of impression I wanted to make on these people, but the Crusader act might not be bad. I still had no idea how to use Miyu's broadsword; come to think of it, I'd never even tried to see if I could lift it. But hopefully I wouldn't have to, and intimidation factor counts for a lot in my business. I leaned back so Benzo could reach the joystick if it looked like we were about to crash our well-clad little asses into a dune, and spherechanged.  
  
When I snapped out of it, I was plated to the nines in full Crusader regalia, looking for all the world like a Miyu cosplayer. I even had the metal mask. With one hand, I tested the sword experimentally. Like the costume, it must have shrunk a little to fit me proportionally, and so it was heavy but manageable. I traded it to Benzo for the joystick and took us down right next to the camp.  
  
I was rushed immediately by two guys--at least, I assumed they were guys or very masculine-framed girls--in dark spandex-type body sock things. They had strange head coverings and little flaps of fabric covering their faces. "What business do you have here?" one of them snapped.  
  
"We're here to have a chat with your boss," I replied. "Leblanc, am I right? She around?"  
  
Polyester-face answered, "At the moment, she's in Guadosalam, but her lieutenants are here."  
  
"Great."  
  
"--but you can't see them without a good reason," he finished. I couldn't see his face, but I was willing to bet he was scowling.  
  
"I have a very large sword." I gestured with it for emphasis. "You don't. Good enough for you?"  
  
"Sorry, no." Rrreoow, rreoow. "Now why don't you beat it, before we have to beat you?"  
  
"We've fried bigger fish than you," Benzo jumped in bravely, waving his gun around a little too violently. "This island is our turf."  
  
Wow, I never knew he had it in him. Good for Benzo. "And that means that if you don't swim off now and get your boss's buddies, little fishies," I added, getting into it now, "we're gonna make surf 'n' turf outta you."  
  
"I'm sick of your little word games! Let's go!" the guy yelled, lunging for me.  
  
"What is all this racket?" a foppish voice sounded from somewhere off to my right. Polyester-face turned in mid-lunge and tried to pull back, ending up falling on his face. Major loss of intimidation points there.  
  
"Yeah, we're tryin' to sleep!" The second voice, lower and meaty-sounding, came from the same direction.  
  
I turned to see the main attraction of this circus: its freak show. The two men standing before me actually would have been okay-looking if you'd put them together and averaged them out into one man. The first was very tall and rail-thin, with elegantly-slanted eyes. The second was short and even more roly-poly-shaped than Ihu, Tuc and Dnac. As it was, they just looked weird.  
  
"So these are the right-hand men, huh?" I sized them up. "You'd think the mighty Leblanc could afford 60 IQs."  
  
"Who are you?!" the tall one demanded.  
  
"The name's Nhadala." I said it easily that time. "I'm in charge of the Machine Faction operations on Bikanel Island. Technically, your digs are illegal--this is Al Bhed land. That means that you need a permit from the Machine Faction to be here, and I'm pretty sure you don't have one. So we'll be taking whatever you've found and you'll be leaving."  
  
"Oh, we will, huh?" The short one was crossing his arms in front of his massive stomach-- they barely reached--and trying to look tough. It just wasn't coming off right. "Well, you're gonna have to do a little convincin'!"  
  
I sighed and rubbed my temples with the hand that wasn't gripping a wicked broadsword. "Look," I said in my best come-on-level-with-me-here voice. "I already sent the Gullwings out here for me--we're really busy and we just don't have time to send our own personnel out here for petty hassles like this. I don't know how many more times I have to say this, but I'll do it again in words of one syllable: You. Give. Me. Stuff. Then. Leave."  
  
The tall one removed a fairly nasty-looking gun from a holster at his side. "I don't believe we will," he sneered. He seemed to do a lot of sneering.  
  
That gun was creeping me out, but then again, I had a bad-ass sword and there was no sense putting all that bravado to waste. I just had to take the chance that the thing was loaded and he had good aim and he was willing and ready to put a nice fresh bullet through my brain. "You guys really aren't getting this the way I'd hoped," I sighed again, shaking my head. "Benzo, help me out here. Maybe you can translate this into some language they'll get. What do sand worms speak?"  
  
"How cute." The tall one was looking down his long, delicate nose at me. "However, your misplaced arrogance will be of no use to you. Our efforts here have been quite lucrative. I'm afraid we have no interest in departing."  
  
Benzo stepped in--maybe he was immune to sarcasm and thought I was serious about translating. "I'm afraid you'll have to," he said, stepping forward. He was trying very hard not to look like an out-of-place dork despite the fact that he was dressed like Rin, but he sounded tougher and more in charge than I did. "My forewoman is right; I'm fairly certain that you don't have a permit to dig here."  
  
"Here's our permit!" the short one yelled in a baritone squeal. As Benzo and I watched with total bewilderment, he started pirouetting in place, spinning until his portly body was just a top-shaped blur. All of a sudden, his huge shield came flying out at us. The edge had been filed until it was razor sharp. I was suddenly aware of the fact that Miyu's Crusader armor is designed to protect her torso and leaves her neck painfully unprotected; the thing could easily take my head off my neck without losing speed. Benzo and I both threw ourselves in different directions and the shield swooped between us inches from my face and returned to the short one's hands.  
  
"Or," I huffed from the ground, suddenly a lot more serious about the whole thing, "we could do it this way." I launched myself onto my feet and charged at them, sword swinging. It occurred to me about halfway through the leap that I had no idea how to do this. Okay, just like the melee back at the Mushroom Rock gate; slash like crazy and hope you hit something. I flailed the sword wildly in both hands as I came down almost on top of the tall one, and I could feel the sick cutting sound more than hearing it as the blade dragged a path through fabric and flesh. I was still wincing by the time I landed.  
  
I hit the ground and flattened myself. I was still an easy target for bullets, but the only way to hurt me with the shield this way was to roll it along the ground like a hoop. The tall one had yanked up the sleeve of his long, expensive-looking coat and was staring at the gash in his arm like he'd never seen blood before. He recovered quickly and was leveling his gun to fire at me when there was a small explosion and the thing zinged out of his hand and clattered on the ground next to me. Benzo was still standing there, but this time he had his own gun still aimed at the tall guy, one eye shut so he could aim better.  
  
The tall one recovered quickly and dove for the gun--the short one was spinning around uselessly, muttering to himself. I scrambled along the ground like a crab from hell, totally forgetting the sword as I stretched my hand out for the other weapon. We reached it at the same time, but my hand hit underneath his. I reared back face-up, aiming the gun at his face, as he reached out to claw me with fingerless-gloved hands.  
  
"Nhadala, duck!" Benzo shouted. Out of the corner of my eye I saw the shield whizzing toward me again. I snapped backwards and spread myself flat on my back on the ground. It skimmed so closely over me that I swear it took some skin off my nose, but on its return trip it slammed into the sword, which was jammed in the ground. The shield fell, but now the tall one had ducked through the chaos to grab the sword and was standing over me, looking straight down and poising the blade directly over my stomach.  
  
Benzo and I both started firing wildly. The tall guy got caught a little off-balance, but he still drove the sword down and clipped my side. Totally by accident, my trigger finger spasmed and I hit him hard in the chest with a bullet. He must have been wearing armor under the coat--which looked like silk, so getting even a bullet through it would be tough--so he probably didn't take any damage worse than a bruise, but he reeled backwards and fell over. The short one was racing for the shield, but the little translator practically flew at him. Another explosion hit the hand on the sword. The short guy howled and stuffed his fingers into his mouth, sucking them and moaning. I knelt next to where the tall guy was lying and pressed the barrel of his gun into his temple, motioning for Benzo to keep his weapon trained on the short guy. Time for the tough act again.  
  
"Now," I said as calmly as humanly possible, "Benzo here and I are pretty nice people, you know? I still think we can have a healthy exchange. So here's how it's gonna work. You two are gonna get up slowly, without making a grab for weaponry of any kind and without calling your goons on us. While we watch--guns aimed, safety off--you're gonna give the order to everyone here to pack it in. Then you're all gonna sit down in a nice big circle on the ground until we're in the air, and when we're gone we'll give you until nightfall to grab everything you can carry and scat. When it's dark, we'll be coming back here, and we'll be happy to give a little helping hand to anyone who's still around. This isn't the way I would have preferred things to happen, but we've got enough threats out here without worrying about violent competition, okay?" I stood up and backed slowly toward the hover. "Let's go."  
  
For once, they actually did what I told them, and five minutes later Benzo and I were in the air. I could already see movement in the camp as the goons rushed around packing all the equipment. As we neared our own camp, though, we could see a different kind of motion flurry going on. There seemed to be a lot more people than normal.  
  
"Well, finally," Benzo said, smiling as he changed back into his normal clothes. "The new diggers are here." 


	13. Enigma Plate

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
You guys all remember Reppi from the last installment in this trilogy, right? I like her a lot, mainly because I own her. But I don't think I own anyone else new here, so don't sue me.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 13: Enigma Plate

* * *

"Hey, Sanna!" I called as soon as we touched ground. "Got some fresh meat for us?"  
  
"Two different kinds!" she called back. "I gotcha' new diggers and new jerky all in one load. Say hello to Djose's finest."  
  
There were seven of them. Four of them were males, big tough-looking guys who were dressed basically like Nedus in standard Al Bhed clothing and full-face goggles. The others weren't Al Bhed--there was one guy who looked like a total city slicker to me and a Crusader type who was still hefting a thin blade. I snickered to myself as I noticed that they were lined up according to height, with the slightly shorter Al Bhed guys on one end, followed by the two taller guys, and on the other end was a woman who was a head taller than anyone else and...had long black braids and deep brown skin and...a blitzball uniform on...  
  
Ur, hu. It was Reppi.  
  
If you don't know Reppi, I should explain that she's a pretty well-known goalie on the blitz circuit. She was the captain of a minor-league team called the Spira Spirals a couple years ago, but a very complex government conspiracy forced them to disband and actually imprisoned her in the Via Purifico. That had actually been where I'd first met her two years earlier, still kicking, chowing down on fiend meat and becoming a master mage. Since we'd gotten out, she'd started a team in the minors called the Bevelle Barbutas--I know, I know; I guess this time around she'd decided to use a name that wasn't a political protest--that was starting to get noticed bigtime in the Spira League. But what the hell was she doing working on a dig in the middle of Bikanel?  
  
She was watching me watch her, and I caught the flash of recognition in her eyes. I put my hands on my hips and kept going in my slightly different Nhadala voice, "Well, well, looks like a good crowd. Okay, people, my name's Nhadala and I'm gonna be your forewoman. Welcome to Bikanel. Hey, Nedus!" I called, and our camp manager jogged over. "Help me out here. How much room do we have in that shelter?"  
  
"None," he replied. "At least, if you want to have any place to sleep. The thing's full with all the personnel we already have."  
  
"Gotcha. So you new guys are gonna be bunking in those tents over there for a little while." I pointed. "Go ahead and get your stuff set up there, and in fifteen minutes I want you back out here talking to the pilot. I've given him a list of your assignments for the afternoon. Picket'll give you the rundown." When they were gone, I turned to Sanna. "Can you make the upgrades on the new commsphere?"  
  
"Yeah, sure. I don't have all that much new hardware for ya, just food and stuff. Want me to get Redeci and Nedus to unload it? And do you have anything to ship back to Djose?"  
  
"Yes to the first question, no to the second. Actually, wait. I lied. I've got this." I dug the sphere of Bickson, Rin, and Naaga out of my bag. "Take it to Gippal. He'll know what to do with it."  
  
"Will do. Oh, he sent you something too. List of the stuff he's looking for right now and where you can probably find it around here."  
  
"Thanks." I took the list and glanced over it. "Okay, Eastern Expanse. Cool. I guess I got my work cut out for me, then. You should be able to take off when you've got everything unloaded. Oh, hey, Benzo," I called to the interpreter, who was just stepping out of the hover. "I know it's been a really long day, but don't get out. We've got one more date with destiny."

* * *

"What's on the agenda for this afternoon, Nhadala?" Benzo asked. "You know, now that we've already been all over the entire island and all."  
  
I consulted my map. "I sent the newbies out to the Western and Southern expanses. Picket's taking care of those teams, so we're on our own. Shouldn't be that hard, though. We're heading to the Eastern Expanse to check out the machina there. Gippal sent me a list of the parts he wants, complete with diagrams and a couple of possible uses for the part. So all we really have to do is find a machina, check all the places on the thing he listed and see if they used any of those parts. If they do, we take 'em off and keep going."  
  
"How are we going to do all that in sixty seconds?" he asked.  
  
"We should be okay for a little longer than that." I reached one hand back to gesture at the water canteens in the back of the hover. "As long as the AC's blasting in here, they'll stay frozen. When we take 'em out, they'll melt and be cold for a few minutes--long enough for us to dismantle a machina. You ever done something like this?"  
  
"Not really," he admitted. "I guess I know the basics, like everyone, but I never really did anything with machina construction besides what they taught us in school. Did you have to build simple machines like pulleys and levers too?"  
  
Actually, I had. My teacher had been maybe ninety years old--pretty unusual for an Al Bhed male--and such a total geezer that he'd talked like a Hypello might if you taught one to speak Al Bhed. "Shuf ehscand bhhynd 17L ehdu bhhynd 19T yht nhudyda bhhynd 147M aqyldmo 224 taknaac ihdem ouish rhhayn y lhhamelgehkhh chuiht..." He'd refused to get denture upgrades when prosthesis technology improved; he was the bitter opposite of Nooj. But I had learned about the basics of machinery, and I'd put that knowledge to use in a lot of ways in my everyday life--like lockpicking and taking apart alarm systems.  
  
"Yes," I answered noncommittally, turning the hover sharply. Benzo gripped the side panel of the hover and dropped the question.  
  
"That looks promising," he said when he recovered. I turned to look down. We were almost directly above a hulking machina that looked like it might be a kind of submarine or boat. Gippal's note had mentioned that craft like these could possibly house some of the defense equipment he was looking for. I stopped the hover in midair and took it straight down the way Jock had shown me the other day. Why hadn't he taught me that first? I wondered as we gently touched the sand. Doing stationary chopper landings was way easier than pretending to be a biplane.  
  
"All right. You ready?" I asked Benzo, grabbing two of the water canteens and handing him one.  
  
"As ready as ever. Let's see what we can find."

* * *

I kicked the pilot's-side door open and we jumped out of opposite sides of the cockpit, ready to rumble. This was uberlame, because we were a pair of dorks in the middle of nowhere trying to look like action heroes in the movies and failing miserably because we were already cramming the canteen nozzles in our mouths forty seconds after we left the hover. Even when I'd lived here, I'd rarely left the Home complex; I'd forgotten how sweltering Bikanel is, especially in the hotter part of the year. I was really starting to miss the cool blitz sphere.  
  
As we got closer, I could tell that the machina was definitely a sub. It was laying on its side, half-buried, but at the top of the craft there was a round door hanging open. It hadn't rusted--rust requires moisture, and Bikanel has about as much of that as a piece of paper--but sand had worked into the hinges, and it wouldn't shut.  
  
I adjusted the dimmer on my goggles and peered at the list Gippal had given me. "Says here the main engine room might have something useful."  
  
"Going in?" Benzo asked lightly, already ahead of me.  
  
Thanks to the goggles, my eyes adjusted to the relative darkness pretty quickly. The corridors were tall enough to accomodate our height, but since everything was sideways, we had to crawl on our hands and knees (actually, Benzo could sorta half-walk) and go up a little bit to get through the doorways. Finding the engine room took some trial and error, but once the two of us made our way to the front of the sub it was easy to figure out which door we were looking for. At least it was a lot cooler in there than outside.  
  
"So what now?" Benzo asked, looking around the room. We were actually on top of what should have been one wall. Here the space was wider, and we were both able to stand fairly comfortably without cracking our skulls on the metal plating.  
  
I had the list pressed almost against my nose. The diagrams were pretty technical and I was quickly getting mystified. We should've gotten Ihu to explain them before we left. "Isn't it obvious?" I bluffed in my best don't-waste-my-time-by-being-a-moron voice.  
  
"Not in the least, Nhadala. And you know it," the interpreter replied. Apparently he understood more about languages than just their mechanics. I'd just been busted.  
  
"Okay, okay, so I'm drawing a blank here," I confessed, sucking on the canteen nozzle. We'd better figure something out before too long, or I'd drink the whole thing. "But it looks like we need to find an engine, which is contained in..." I squinted at Gippal's angular Al Bhed chicken scratch. "'...y sadym knyda?' Hmm...looks like there's a grate or a door or something in this kind of sub--old technology, maybe a boiler kinda thing. I can't read his writing all that well, but I think the kind of engines used during the era this type of craft was made tended to overheat, so they kept them inside specially insulated containers. Or something."  
  
"Like this?" Benzo was pointing at a raised, rounded box on the floor--er, the wall. It was made out of sheet metal like the rest of the sub, but it had a hinged top. I shrugged and he braced the heels of his hands against the lid until he forced it open. A small blue sphere rolled out and across the sandy wall.  
  
"Guess that's not it, then," I commented, scooping it up and tossing it in the air so I could catch it behind my back. I almost missed; I must be getting rusty. "Think we could get anything for it?"  
  
"Depends on what's on it," Benzo replied. "Save it; it might be worth something. Let's try that one." He gestured at a similar box high on the wall to our right, which I was pretty sure might have been intended as a floor.  
  
He was having trouble reaching it, so I got up on my tiptoes and stretched until I managed to get the box open and get out what it was inside. My knowledge of machina is nowhere near advanced enough to have any idea what the hell it was, but it looked complex. It also looked sorta like Gippal's diagram, so I decided it must be a good thing.  
  
Benzo walked around behind me to look at the list. "Looks like we can get three parts from this, right? Stuff to up the power level available for attack? Umm...here, here, and here." I steadied the engine while he pried them loose. "Is that all, then?" he asked when I had them safely stored in my now very beat-up gear bag. "I'm almost out of water."  
  
"Yeah." I hefted the bag strap higher up on my shoulder and wiped ineffectually at the sheen of sweat coating my forehead. "Let's bail." In unison, we crawled slowly all the way back and out of the sub and then made a mad dash for the hover.

* * *

After sticking my face up against the AC for a full seven minutes, I took us up and did a quick flyby of the Syndicate camp at the Oasis. It looked like they were mostly packed up by now, and I could see a couple of small ships departing in the distance. We passed Sanna going the other way on our way back, and we managed to flag her down and get her to wait until Redeci could get the artifacts packed and ready to go. At least we could finally show Gippal that something was going on around here.  
  
"I'm glad ya finally found something," Sanna told us cheerfully, hefting the bulky packages up and into her cargo hold. "Gip's been on us nonstop because we can't get anything. I hear Nooj is really workin' on him to try to get some heavy artillery at Mushroom Rock, and now that Baralai's been showin' up askin' for rifles and other firearms, the orders are comin' in so fast we can't keep up."  
  
"We're Al Bhed!" I burst out. "Don't tell me we're actually gonna sink so low as to make weapons for Yevonites! For what, so they can turn around and blow our brains out when our backs are turned? Next you're gonna tell me we're giving the Guado machine guns!"  
  
"Nhadala, we're not concerned with politics here," Sanna explained patiently. "We're here for one reason only--to sell whatever we can to the highest bidder. Right now, that's New Yevon, because they're backin' their orders up with temple money. No tellin' who'll win the contracts in the long run--we can't do anything until we got parts anyway. And speaking of parts, I'd better head out if I want to make it to Djose by nightfall. I'll be back in a couple days."  
  
I sighed. "Yeah, fine. See ya." It was still midafternoon and I was in a bad mood now. The camp was almost deserted except for me and Benzo, and I was getting kinda sick of talking to him. Time for a long, hot shower. I was slinking into the shelter to figure out where I'd stashed my towel--  
  
--when the commsphere flashed. Hazily, I noticed that Sanna had installed a new sphere screen so the low-quality image was easier to see. I wished she'd just brought us a new one instead of trying to upgrade Shinra's junk. I was still grumbling to myself about this when the screen started flashing too and gave me the image feedback.  
  
Bickson.

* * *

Translations:  
  
"Ur, hu." - "Oh, no."  
  
"Shuf ehscand bhhynd 17L ehdu bhhynd 19T yht nhudyda bhhynd 147M aqyldmo 224 taknaac ihdem ouish rhhayn y lhhamelgehkhh chuiht..." - Literally translates to, "Mnow inmsert pnnart 17C into pnnart 19D and rnotate pnnart 147L exactly 224 degrees until youmn hnnear a cnnelickingnn snound..." But this is Al Bhed with a Hypello accent, which includes a lot of extra "h" and "sh" sounds, so what the teacher really means is "Now insert part 17C into part 19D and rotate part 147L exactly 224 degrees until you hear a clicking sound..."  
  
"...y sadym knyda?" - "...a metal grate?" 


	14. Unwavering Guard

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
Ahh, yeah, finally, the diggers are excavating through my writer's block on this story. I own Chelza and Gar, by the way.   
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
_Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up_  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 14: Unwavering Guard

* * *

He was standing at the edge of Youth League HQ at Mushroom Rock. The sunlight reflects off the cliffs and it always seems like sunset there. The camera was initially aimed back at him, but then he turned and shot toward one of the tents.  
  
"That's where I'm going," he explained to the camera. "That's Miyu's tent."  
  
He got closer and started to brush aside the flap of the tent, then stopped. Suddenly, I could see why: Miyu wasn't alone inside. She was sitting on one side of a cheap foldable wooden table--and on the other side of the table, Rin was pacing around the room.  
  
Bickson whirled around and pressed his back to the tent, listening. The camera was focused on the Crusaders on the other side of the encampment inspecting some machina weapons, but I could hear every word they were saying.  
  
"Secc Miyu, do you know where she is?" Rin was asking.  
  
Miyu hesitated, then spoke. "...yes. I do."  
  
"Where?"  
  
I could hear Bickson leaning forward, but Miyu's reply was too soft to hear. "There's no one else I can tell. Sooner or later I'm sure Bickson will come by, but I'm under strict orders not to give out any information to anyone. But I feel that I can trust you with this," she continued in a louder tone a few moments later. "They sent her there as damage control."  
  
"Perhaps that is best," Rin conceded. "She does have a hot temper."  
  
"Like Amirel?"  
  
"How would you know about that?" he asked sharply.  
  
"Only what she's told me."  
  
I heard a noise like Rin was sitting down heavily. "...yes," he said simply after a long silence. "She becomes more like her mother every day. Someday it may get her into trouble. I do not believe in souls, but if I did...I would say it was in her soul."  
  
Miyu was silent. After a moment, I could hear Rin chuckling quietly to himself.  
  
"What is it?" Miyu asked.  
  
"This is the first time I've talked about her in more than two years," he replied. "I've tried so hard to forget..." I almost jumped. Rin almost never talked about himself, and definitely never talked about Mom. Now he was going off to someone like Miyu who was almost a total stranger. He must be under a lot of stress.  
  
"What was she like?"  
  
He exhaled shortly, something between a sigh and a scoff. "Brilliant. Explosive. She terrified me sometimes. I would have taken the world apart for her. In the end, she settled for taking me apart." The short, clipped thoughts weren't like him at all. The voice wasn't like him. None of this was like him. What was wrong with him?  
  
More silence. Then, quietly, Miyu's voice. "How do you bear it?"  
  
Rin made the same helpless sound again. "I try to forget." He almost laughed again, a bitter half-barking sound. "I can't. I wouldn't want to. But...I stay busy--" He stopped, and I heard a scuffle as the chair turned in the dirt. "--You look as if you understand."  
  
"Yes." Miyu's voice was picking up that distant tone it had always gotten when she talked about her past. "I also lost someone I loved a long time ago. Sin took him from me." Her voice grew quiet, like she was talking to herself. "I would have done anything for him. If he had remained with me, I'd be in a tiny village by the Moonflow right now, selling potions and cooking dinner...for our children." Her voice broke. "But when he died, I wanted to become him. I learned how to blitz, but I wasn't very good. All I could do was defend a goal--I'd pretend that the goal was him, and the ball was Sin. If I could catch it, I could save him. I became a Crusader. At Operation Mi'ihen..." She hesitated, then continued. "...I was reckless, because I wanted to die. I charged at Sin alone, with just a sword. But...it didn't kill me. Instead, I was thrown off. When I awoke, it was all over. I looked around that desolate beach and I saw the faces of the dead...I knew then that I had to fight."  
  
"Then you do understand," Rin replied.  
  
There was silence again.  
  
"I envy her sometimes, Rin," Miyu burst out suddenly. "They fight all the time, but she and Bickson look so happy together. I used to have someone that made me feel like that too.  
  
"I'm sorry," she said after another beat. I could hear that she was still crying. "I don't know what I'm doing. I just started talking."  
  
"It's all right," Rin answered her softly.  
  
Slowly and deliberately, Bickson swung the camera around and lifted the tent flap just a crack so he could see in. Rin was sitting across the table from Miyu, his hand resting gently on hers. She was looking at him, maskless, with tears in her eyes. She didn't take her hand away.

* * *

Bickson spun again and walked back through the camp and out. He was silent as he left HQ and took the lift down. When he was alone beneath the overhang back on Mushroom Rock Road, he set the camera down on a ledge and faced it. "I'm never going to get it out of her if she's under orders. There must be some safety concern. But at least now I know that you're alive. Word is that Naaga's working for the Machine Faction now. It won't take me long to get to Djose on foot, even if this is a combat zone. Maybe she knows something.  
  
"You're gonna laugh at me when you see this," he half-laughed himself. "You'll probably roll your eyes and say something like, 'You big moron, like I can't take care of myself.' But...I worry that you're fighting somewhere now. Are you in danger? If I know you, you'll have wormed your way straight into the heart of the action. But...dammit, Lin. I don't think I'll show you these recordings. But I have to remember what everyone says. I have to learn everything I can, and follow all the clues until they lead to you. If you're fighting, I'm going to fight with you. If you're building weapons, I'll learn about machina until I can help. I just--dammit!" He slammed a fist against the rock face. "I hope you're all right."  
  
The transmission ended. I stared at the blank screen, feeling the deepest frustration I'd ever experienced. Even if I could get a message to the Machine Faction, there was no way Gippal would let me tell him where I was--he'd come charging out here, with my luck reporters would follow him, and my whole cover would be blown. Could anyone at least get the message through that I was all right, and that I was coming back as soon as I could? Tyssed...I was as trapped as he was.  
  
So if I wanted to get home, I'd have to dig up a lot of parts so the Faction could build its weapons. But if those weapons ended up getting sold to New Yevon...the Aurochs were all Youth Leaguers, and so were most of my friends. What if I was finding the parts that would be used to make the guns that would kill them? What if some of the New Yevonites found out where I was and came to kill me? Again, I wondered if there was any way to get out of here. It wouldn't be that hard to stow away inside a shipping crate in Sanna's freight hover, or convince Buddy and Aniki to take me back to Besaid. Wasn't it more important that I help the Youth League by protecting my new hometown from what might be imminent invasion?  
  
There was no way. Hiding in a hover would let me out at Djose, and I'd almost certainly get caught and sent right back. And even if I made it to Besaid, what was I going to do there? Beclem would have heard about the trouble I'd caused. He'd probably enjoy reporting me to Miyu and Nooj himself, and then I'd really have it coming. There was no telling how long a war might last--I could be here for months or even years, especially if I didn't find more parts. I was starting to get really depressed. I was royally screwed, and there was no way around it.  
  
Watching Bickson's transmission reminded me of the sphere Benzo and I had found in the sub. I sighed. My shower could wait until I'd seen what was on it. If it was worth anything, the Gullwings might pay through the nose for it. Hey, knowing Gippal, maybe I could use the money to buy my way out.  
  
I took out the sphere and popped it into the base of the commsphere. It took a while to register on the screen, and when it did it was pretty grainy. But I could see that the background was some kind of tropical village--there were buildings like the ruins in Besaid. It didn't look like any place in Besaid I'd ever seen, though, I noticed. I didn't recognize it as any place in Kilika either, but maybe there was somewhere I hadn't been. Or maybe whatever port it was had changed since then; this sphere definitely looked old. I could hear gulls calling and a breeze over the water. It was obviously a gorgeous day there; the palm trees were swaying gently and the sky was a clear, pure blue.  
  
I heard footsteps and then a person appeared in front of the screen. The first thing I noticed was the mottled blue-brown skin and then the stiffly kinky hair splayed in all directions. It was a Guado--I felt my skin crawl and there was a sharp pain in my right hand as the knuckles cracked--but it was wearing a long dress and the hair was grown long. When the figure turned to face the camera, I added that to the delicate facial features and decided that it was a female, and a young one. But what was a Guado doing in Kilika? Even before they'd fled to Macalania in fear of being attacked by my people and the Ronso, the Guado had rarely left Guadosalam. Weird.  
  
"Good morrow," the small Guado female said in a high, cultured-sounding voice. Something in it--the pitch, or maybe the inflection--reminded me of hearing Seymour speak two years ago. It wasn't much like Nav's scratchy voice. She was speaking in English, but it was a strange kind of English I'd never heard before. "I am Chelza, of the city of Zanarkand, greatest in all of Spira. It is that place from which my family does come, but this terrible war has forced us to flee here, to the isle of Bikanel."  
  
What the--? War? There had only been one major war in the recorded history of Spira, and that was the Machina War a thousand years ago. If she came from Zanarkand, then this must be... that old? Sphere hunters would pay a fortune for it.  
  
Then the second part of her statement hit me. Bikanel? Bikanel was an island, all right, but it was dead and sandy, nothing like the paradise the young female Guado was standing in. When had it ever looked like that?  
  
"My father has remained there to fight." The girl looked down and bit her lip. "It is only my mother and my young brother Gar who have accompanied me here. In eleven years, I have never seen such a place! Such lush and verdant jungles, such blue waters and cool breezes. It does warm my heart that if I cannot live in the beauty of Zanarkand created by man, I may at least live here in the beauty of nature."  
  
So she was an eleven-year-old refugee. And the entire island was an oasis. This was getting trippier and trippier by the moment, and it only got worse when she looked up with a gleam in her small dark eyes and said, "When the war has ended, my father promised me that he will come for us. He said that there will be a great concert to celebrate Zanarkand's victory! I cannot wait until I can return--my father told me that perhaps Lenne, the most famous songstress in all of Spira, will sing! In the past, I have only seen her on our sphere, but it is said that she is even more beautiful and sings even more wonderfully in person. When I am older, I wish to be a songstress who will light up the stage as she does!"  
  
I half-smiled in spite of myself. Naaga had talked like that when she was a little kid too. Rikku still did, actually. Still dreaming of fame and glory. Then again...didn't I do that too? I wondered if maybe the Guado hadn't always been as barbaric as they were now, or if she was just too young to have learned it yet. She seemed so...normal.  
  
"But I do worry that I may be kept from this goal," Chelza continued thoughtfully, sitting down in front of the sphere. Her long skirt stretched as she crossed her legs in the lotus position and set her chin in her hands. "In all the time I can remember, I have never yet seen a songstress who looked like me. It seems that only those like Lenne are beautiful enough to sing for Spira's people--those with creamy skin and long brown hair. I worry that because I am Guado, others may try to keep me from the stage."  
  
I stopped cracking my knuckles and stared at the sphere. I'd thought the same thing when I was her age--I can't blitz unless I join the Psyches. No other team will ever take an Al Bhed. No one will ever come to see my games. There's no way to make it in this world unless you're a Yevonite. So the Guado had gone through the same thing as the Al Bhed. Interesting--but then, I reflected, it was different, after all. After everything they and their leader had done, the Guado deserved whatever they got. The Al Bhed had never done anything except keep alive the ancient traditions of Zanarkand.  
  
"But I will not let them," the Guado said on the screen, jutting her small pointed chin out defiantly. "I shall be the biggest star Spira has seen since time began! It has been only a few months since my father sent word for us. Soon, I am sure that the war will end and he will call us home for Lenne's concert!" There was a small snuffling sound and a chubby little Guado toddler wondered onto the screen. He was sucking his thumb and dragging a stuffed Moogle along the ground with his other hand. Naaga had a Moogle like that too.  
  
"Chel," he whimpered, "I am afraid. In the street, they are saying that Zanarkand is losing the war. They predict that the Bevellians shall descend upon the refugees on this island within days."  
  
He looked about four, but he was talking like he was thirty-four. I was used to Al Bhed whiz kids, but Chelza had used that weird formal dialect too. Was this Old Guado? I should ask Benzo.  
  
Chelza hesitated, and I caught a hint of wild fear like an animal's in her small black eyes before she turned to the little boy and smiled. "These are merely rumors, Gar. They are falsehoods. We shall be at home again soon, you shall see." She scooped him up in her arms and he slung his own chubby ones around her neck, the Moogle swinging by its arm through the air. "Come," she cooed soothingly, "Let us go. Perhaps Mother will allow you to have just one sweet before dinner."  
  
"Really?" he squealed, and I smiled again. At least he was still just a regular kid in some ways.  
  
"Assuredly." Chelza smiled again and shifted her brother into one arm and reached out with the other towards the sphere. The image ground to a slow halt. 


	15. Restless Sleep

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.  
  
I mentioned I own Sanna, right? I don't own Angra Mainyu, though. I don't think I could design something that creepy-looking.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
_Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up_  
  
by flame mage  
  
spherechange 15: Restless Sleep

* * *

The days started falling into a blurry grind after that. The new digging teams figured out what they were doing and started larger-scale excavations in the Eastern Expanse. I figured out that managing a dig really wasn't that different from managing a blitzball team--I sculpted the grand designs and made sure everyone, myself included, followed them. When I wasn't bawling someone out, making notes about our finds, or taking one of my increasingly frequent trips to see Marnela at the Cactuar Nation, I was out digging just like everyone else.  
  
I still couldn't find a way to talk to Reppi without blowing my cover. Most of the other diggers saw me as background noise, the big bad boss whose orders they had to follow. I get the feeling that most of them probably liked me or at least thought I was okay, but part of the role Gippal had told me to play involved giving them a pretty healthy respect for me. I think I've mentioned before that because of our millennium-long status as Spira's scapegoats, we Al Bhed became pretty tough. That meant that in Bikanel with a mostly Al Bhed crew, "respect" was spelled "h-a-r-d-a-s-s." Nedus kept trying to talk blitz with me, but I was afraid that I'd slip and he'd see through my already-flimsy I'm-just-a-really-hardcore-fan line, so I avoided him. That meant that my only real friend around camp was probably Benzo.  
  
I take that back. My other friend was more surprising: Marnela. She was growing increasingly desperate as she felt the fiend presence grow stronger and kept begging us to do something about it. The next time the Gullwings came to our camp, I finally sent them out to make official diplomatic contact, but it didn't do any tangible good for either side. But Benzo and I went out almost every day to see what was going on in her world and tell her what was going on in ours. Eventually I started kinda-sorta understanding what she was saying.  
  
Benzo and I dug a lot, mostly away from the other excavation teams, mostly in the Eastern Expanse. We learned to deal with the fiends. He turned out to be an Alchemist, and when money came in from Djose we spent a lot of it on potions from the Merchant, which Benzo then mixed to heal me while I was getting sliced to ribbons close-range. I was used to bruises from the blitz sphere, but in the Sanubia Desert you will get clawed, beaten, pounded, impaled, and swallowed whole. The way he corrected my grammar still bugged me, and he still hated the way I cursed all the time, but we had a lot to talk about. It seemed like he'd been almost everywhere in Spira, and he told me about his travels and all the interesting people he'd met. I wanted to tell him about myself too, but I couldn't. Instead, I earned myself a reputation as a cynic by cracking a constant stream of jokes about anything and everything.  
  
I was glad to have the two of them to talk to, but perpetual lonliness still weighed on my shoulders. The feeling reached a fever pitch when another transmission from Bickson came in via the commsphere. He was at Djose. I gathered that rumors had gone around that I was working on Bikanel, and he was begging Naida to register him for the dig. Normally she would have sent him through right away--he was young and strong and hardworking, exactly what we were looking for-- but she must have been under orders that anyone who knew me too closely couldn't be selected, and she turned him away with a cold sneer. I raged at Gippal for an hour before he finally hung up on me that night, but no one would let Bickson come to me, and no one would tell him where I was. The worst part of that transmission, though, was seeing Naaga. She'd chopped off her long, beautiful ponytail and feathered her hair into a pixie cut around her face and traded in her cutesy skirt and front-lace top for baggy pants and a pedestrian harness top. But the worst part for me wasn't the new look or the fact that she was wearing goggles now. It was the businesslike tone in her voice when she curtly told Bickson that she didn't know where I was and went back to installing a new firing mechanism in the drone machina she was building. It was the way she didn't even look twice when Gippal passed. Only a few months ago, my sister had been a boy-crazy teenage girl with a childish streak and a flair for being adorable and sneaky. All of a sudden, she was like a different person.  
  
Bickson was in bad shape. More than once, he went back to Youth League headquarters, where Miyu was sympathetic but silent. I kept hoping that Rin would at least say I was alive and doing all right, but he wouldn't even tell anyone that much. The main thing Bickson did was make the commute from Besaid to Luca every day, sometimes even twice a day, and haunt all my usual hangouts. As a result, I saw a lot of what Beclem was doing to my team, and it started driving me crazy. These guys were carefree, fun-loving blitzers, and he was hounding and pounding them into dead-eyed soldiers. Some days he worked them so hard they could barely stand by the end of the morning, and then he'd drive them even harder in the afternoon. I became obsessed with running the Gunner's Gauntlet. I saw myself taking down fiends in my sleep and then beating Beclem up for good measure. Every time I got so tired and frustrated that I wanted to scream and smash something or curl up into the fetal position and let the sands sweep over me, I thought about him, and the sheer fury was enough to keep me going.

* * *

It was after one of those times that I first saw it. It was the dead of night and I was sleeping in the shelter, which was jammed and sandy and sweltering hot. Some deserts are burning all day and then freeze at night--not Sanubia. For hours, I lay on my back, remembering that first tournament two years ago. I kept thinking about the second night, when Bickson had taken me up to the roof of the Luca blitz stadium and I'd seen the skyline of the city for the first time. All those millions of lights, with the breeze coming off from the sea. All the sounds of music and laughter and people talking coming from everywhere, and these days machina too, and people speaking Al Bhed. The shelter was dead silent except for the sound of Goma's gentle snoring. I had to get out of there.  
  
So I half-vaulted over all the sleeping bodies and tore off running on foot, completely alone. I knew by then that this could be suicide on Bikanel, where sandstorms and fiends both come out of nowhere. Even if I'd been in a hover, going out alone in the dead of night was more than my life was worth, but I didn't care by then. I was looking at the sand, but I wasn't seeing it. All I could think about was Beclem's stupid owl-eyed mask and that dully angry voice ordering the guys to get up, you lazy good-for-nothings; what have those idiotic captains of yours had you doing for two years?  
  
I probably would have walked all the way out to the edge of the island and then jumped in the sea and started swimming back to Besaid if I'd had the chance, but as it turned out I didn't. I was in the middle of the Western Expanse when all of a sudden, I realized that I was trembling. It took me a second to figure out that it wasn't me--the ground all around me was shaking. And then the sand erupted out of nowhere underneath me and I was hurled backwards into the air.  
  
I hit the sand hard and a small dune nearby collapsed on top of me. I'd left my goggles back at camp. The sand was filling my eyes and nose and mouth, and I was choking and flailing wildly. If I hadn't been able to force my head out, I would have died.  
  
It's ironic, then, that getting covered by that dune might have been the only thing that kept me alive. I couldn't see what had caused the eruption, but it was obviously huge, and it was alive too. Tears were streaming down my face as I struggled to blink the sand out of my eyes, but I could see a massive dark hulk against the silvery landscape. Then I blinked again. There wasn't just one monster--there were three. Were they attached somehow?  
  
"Marnela!" I would have gasped if my mouth hadn't been clamped around six pounds of the Sanubia Desert. This--this had to be the fiend she kept mentioning. In twenty years on this island, I'd never seen anything like it.  
  
Suddenly I realized that it was growing larger. I sunk myself lower into the sand and froze, tilting my face upward to try to keep air going through my lungs. The fiend was getting closer...and closer...and closer...  
  
Yep, I was gonna die, I decided. It was surprisingly easy to deal with, not even as big a deal as losing a blitz match. I don't know, maybe I'm just good at getting fatalistic. But even then, all I could think about was how much it sucked that now Beclem was totally gonna have the run of the team, and there wouldn't be a damn thing I could do about it.  
  
Just like I'm convinced that if I hadn't gotten trapped in the dune, I wouldn't have survived, I'm also convinced that having something to get pissed off about helped me get through what happened next. I was so busy concentrating on everything I wished I was gonna live to do that I didn't have time to freak out as the thing got nearer and nearer. A few seconds before it was on me, I realized that it was too close. It hadn't seen me--but it was going to pass right over me. I started taking a blitz breath.  
  
And then the moonlight was gone and my nose was half an inch from a smooth, running, scaly wall. I nestled my head as far down as I could while keeping the little hollow of sand from caving in over me. Another thing that kept me alive: as a blitzer, I could hold my breath a lot longer than most people. It took about thirty seconds for the thing to pass over me, and in that time, I couldn't get any air--not that I would have dared to breathe even if I could have.  
  
When it was finally gone, I exhaled slowly and took a deep breath. I could move my head and neck a little, but the rest of my body was completely buried. I tried to free myself and discovered that not only was I totally stuck, but moving really hurt like hell. I couldn't tell yet if anything was broken, but I was definitely going to have some bruises if I ever got out of there.  
  
Later I'd look back on it and laugh sardonically about just how many ways the world is out to get you. I could have died in one more way--totally immobile under the sand, I would have starved to death if a dark shape in the sky hadn't happened to pass over me.  
  
It was the freight hover!  
  
I took another deep breath and screamed as loud as I could, without worrying about words. Sanna probably couldn't hear me very well over the noise of the hover, but she must have picked up a little, because she stopped to hover in midair and look around for the source of the scream. I did it again, even louder, and she backtracked and landed on the sand near me.  
  
"Sanna!" I yelled as soon as she jumped out of the hover. "I'm trapped. I need your help."  
  
"Nhadala?" she asked. She was pacing so fast that she nearly stepped on my face. When she saw me, she gasped. "Hang on, girl. I'll have you out in no time flat!" With that, she dropped to her knees on the ground and started digging me out of the sand with her hands. It took her a couple of minutes to get my arms free, and after that things went a little faster. Eventually I was able to wriggle all the way out and get myself spread out on the desert floor.  
  
She peered down at me through her sandscratched goggles. "So, who'd ya take with ya?"  
  
"No one," I replied with my eyes closed.  
  
"Where are your goggles?"  
  
"Back at camp."  
  
"Why'd ya come out here?"  
  
"I felt like taking a damn walk," I snapped.  
  
Sanna bent down and smacked me. "You idiot," she snapped right back at me, "You're not a greenhorn. You know better than to go out all alone in the middle of the night without even goggles on. If I hadn't gotten an early start outta Djose, you coulda been in there for days. What were you thinking?" Before I could answer, she replied for me, "Ya weren't. Can you stand?"  
  
In answer, I struggled to pull myself into a sitting position and then all the way up. She grabbed my wrist and half-dragged me over to the hover. "Man, if the forewoman's like this, I hate to see what kinda shape the diggers are in. Come on, missy. You are going right back where you belong."  
  
I was sore as hell and really wishing I hadn't decided to do this. Sanna didn't help any. "Man," she kept muttering to herself all the way back to camp, "Talk about arrogant. People like you always think nothing can touch them. Think you're so much better or faster or smarter than everyone else on the planet? Yeah, well, you've been better and faster and smarter all the way to the grave if I hadn't been there to bail your ass out. When are you gonna grow up already?"  
  
"Who the hell do you think you're talking to?" I demanded. "Look, kid, maybe you got Gippal protecting you back on the mainland, out here you answer to me. Bikanel is my turf."  
  
"Bikanel is no one's turf anymore," she shot back. "Least of all yours. Ya just proved that! And Benzo tells me you've been runnin' around, swiping supplies from ships, charging into the middle of the Leblanc Syndicate without thinking...you act so tough, but you're just like a little kid, never know when to stop."  
  
I wanted to scream at her. It was like a slap in the face. I was thinking about Naaga on that sphere and her short hair. When she was a little kid, I was the serious, responsible one. I was the one who always did everything. In two years...I'd grown up too fast, and then I'd regressed.  
  
Back at Mi'ihen, I mentioned how celebrity changes people. It changed Bickson. It changed Rin. It changed me. It makes you feel...unstoppable, somehow different from everyone around you, especially when what got you there is something as physical as blitz.  
  
And now Sanna was grumbling to herself and calling me an arrogant little kid. Cracking my knuckles, I stared angrily out at the unchanging desert landscape and wondered if she was right. 


	16. Mercurial Strike

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

I know, I know, I'm a terrible slacker. This chapter and all the ones after it are dedicated to Kane Skylight, for IMing me at least once a week: "Update yet?" I hope you talk to me before you see this, so I can actually say yes for once.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up

by flame mage  
  
spherechange 16: Mercurial Strike

* * *

I spent most of the morning in bed staring at the wall. Eventually Sanna came into the shelter, banged a small cardboard box down on the floor by my cot, and walked out without a word. A few minutes later I heard the whirr as the hover took off.

When I was sure she was gone and I was back in dead silence, I struggled to sit up and grab the box. Inside were three glowing spheres and a note in borderline-illegible handwriting.

_"Hey, hon, _ _I've spliced out the three dress spheres from that video sphere, so these should work for you as a Songstress, a Gunner, and a Gun Mage. You know the drill. Don't get too carried away playing with them--if we don't start getting some results around here we'll make about as much money on this war as we would selling time shares in Sanubia. Come on, baby, let's see some hustle! _ _Love, Gippal _

_PS--But don't kill yourself."_

__

Ironically, that was the most comforting thing I'd heard in a long time.

I took the dress spheres out and rolled them around in my hand. I'd already used the Songstress, and I knew from the fight with Benzo that Rin was the Gun Mage. So Bickson was naturally a Gunner. That would explain his affinity for the Gauntlet back on Besaid. That was when the idea hit me: I could use that sphere to practice, and when I got back, I'd be able to show that moron Beclem a thing or two. That thought cheered me up enough to get out of bed.

I still couldn't hear anything outside the shelter, so I got up and stumbled outside into the sunlight. The place looked pretty much deserted. Everyone must have gotten their assignments and headed out for the day already. It was already almost noon.

"Anyone around?" I called, walking slowly toward the middle of camp. The hovers were gone--even the mechanics must've gone with them this time.

"Yeah, over here!" someone else yelled back from one of the tents. I turned around to see Reppi walk out holding a charred piece of scrap metal in her hands. "Hey, boss," she greeted me. "You doing okay?"

"Not bad," I lied. "What are you still doing around? Looks like you're pretty much the only person left in camp."

"Looks like it, huh?" She shrugged. "Yeah, guess so. I haven't been lookin' around much. I've been in that tent all morning, testin' this out."

I was completely lost until I remembered. Oh, yeah, the machina squadrons on the rampage in the Eastern Expanse. Ihu had told me that they'd been designed to keep civilians away from the projects going on there--the scientists had been virtually clueless about a lot of the technology they'd been experimenting on, so there had been a lot of mishaps. After a couple of kids playing near there had been hurt trying to operate an experimental submarine in the middle of the desert, the teams had come up with small attack drones to keep people out of the region. None of us knew how to shut them off, and most of the scientists who'd worked there were dead, so we were at a loss to do anything except take them all out. I knew Reppi was a pretty strong mage, so eventually I got her to take a look at the problem and try to see if she could come up with a solution.

"Come up with anything?" I wanted to know.

"Electric shocks stop 'em for a while, but the easiest thing to do is just swipe their internal engines--if you're fast enough. I'll see if I can figure out a way to slow 'em down."

We were talking totally normally, and I had this sudden urge to grab her by the throat and shake her. "I'm LINNA!" I wanted to scream at her. "Stop falling for this stupid half-ass lookalike act and tell everyone I'm here so I can tell Gippal it's not my fault and go home!"

"Great," I told her instead. "Keep up the good work." I turned and started off toward the side of camp where we kept the hovers. Man, was even Benzo gone?

"Hey, Linna!" Reppi called suddenly from behind me.

My muscles twitched, but I managed to shut myself up in time. "Just a wannabe," I called back.

When I looked over my shoulder, she was watching me thoughtfully. "Just checkin'," she said, half to herself.

* * *

Luckily I didn't have to say anything else, because right then my commsphere rang. I picked it up; it was Benzo. "Nhadala, you've gotta come see this," he said. "Marnela told me about a hidden cavern in the Machina Graveyard. I guess one of the Cactuars found it while they were training, but she says there's some really good stuff there."

"How soon can you pick me up?" I asked.

"I'm on my way now."

In ten minutes I was over the Eastern Expanse, with Benzo riding shotgun and a Cactuar bouncing around on my lap. The interpreter was listening to its chitters and telling me where to go, but when the little guy (or girl; as with Chocobos, I didn't know and wasn't checking) started going nuts on me, I figured out on my own that it was time to land.

"Okay, little buddy, where to now?" I asked as the thing leapt out and started dancing in circles in the sand.

"This one doesn't know much Al Bhed yet," Benzo told me as he switched to Cactuar and started chittering out my question. At least, I thought that was what he was doing. He could have been saying, "Haha! That stupid blonde lady still thinks there is a cave here! What she doesn't know is that I am going to run her out here in the desert pretending to search for it until she collapses from exhaustion and I get her job! Just pick a direction!"

But if that was the plan, it didn't work, because the little creature spun around one more time and marched decisively off over a hill until it disappeared from view. When I'd jogged to the top of the dune myself, I expected to see it hobbling off into the sand, but it was gone. I was still standing there like a moron when Benzo calmly strode up behind me, jumped off the dune into the pit below, and turned around to walk straight back into the hill. When I got down there, I saw that the hill I'd been standing on actually formed the top of the cave.  
The Cactuar chittered something to Benzo, who chittered back, sending the green thing skittering out into the sun. "I told her we could find her way back. She was headed somewhere to train."

"Train?" I asked, adjusting the dimmers on my goggles as we walked deeper into the cave and the light receded.

"Yes. She's one of the Ten Gatekeepers, Bartschella. She was the one who found this place, but from what I hear it's not her style. She likes to be where the action is."

"Don't we all," I muttered. "Where do you think this stuff is?"

"I don't know, but we'd better stop and arm ourselves before we go in any farther. This place is bound to be filled with fiends." He stopped and turned toward me expectantly, and I unshouldered my gear bag and took out the garment grid and the dress spheres. "What do you think? Gun Mage again?" he asked me, studying them.

I shrugged. There was no way there was enough light in here for him to be able to pick out a Luca Goers uniform. "I'm going Gunner." And hopefully there really were a ton of fiends in here, just so I could get used to the dual triggers, even if I had to sacrifice the improved vision my goggles would give me. I just made out the outline of his profile nodding in assent, and so I reached my hand out to touch Bickson's sphere.

The transformation was weird. It wasn't so much the shift from my blitz uniform to one that Doram or Balgerda would wear, but landing in a puddle of Bickson's consciousness. I was picking up a hint of his typical arrogant jerk persona. Almost involuntarily, I flexed my arms, laughing a little to myself. Now I was feeling good.

There was a brief glare of colored light in the darkness as Benzo switched to Gun Mage, and then we continued together in the darkness. The cave was stretching out into a long tunnel, just wide enough for each of us to keep one hand on the wall and lace the fingers of our inside hands together to keep from getting separated. I couldn't tell whether or not the route was straight, but it didn't matter, because there was no other way to go.

We'd been walking for maybe ten minutes when I heard the whirring sound. I froze, holding my breath, and cut my eyes around at Benzo. He was looking at me and I knew he'd heard it too. Then suddenly a series of stomps started and got louder and louder. Silently, I dropped my hands and reached for the holsters at my sides.  
The ground was shaking.

* * *

The next thing I was aware of was metal gleaming against the light from Benzo's goggles. Whatever it was, it was almost on top of us now. And whatever it was, it was large.

"I was wrong," Benzo whispered to me. "It's not filled with fiends. It's filled with machina."

And then there was a four-foot corkscrew stabbing out right above his head.

If he'd been a few inches taller, it would have impaled him, driving that nail straight through his face. He instantly flattened himself on the ground in the center of the corridor, and then I heard the sound of heavy machinery moving and realized that the thing was raising a leg. Without thinking, I threw myself at him in a blitz tackle I'd practiced a million times back in Besaid with the guys and rolled us both straight into the wall. The sharp-edged metal platform slammed into the ground with such force that both of us literally bounced.

I rolled and pressed my back against Benzo, ripping both guns out of the holsters and firing with two hands at the thing's leg, which was still pressing into the sand-covered stone floor of the tunnel. I'd meant to defend him--another dry-land version of a blitz tech--but he pushed me over just a little so he could get his own oversized gun out and aim it at the colossus. The next thing I knew, my back was up against the pole that attached the platform to the rest of the machine and I was being dragged up into the air on top of it.

I scrambled to grab onto the pole and dropped one of my guns. Beneath me, I saw Benzo scrambling to, to grab the weapon before the foot came down again and crushed it. As the foot reached the top of its trajectory before slamming down, I finally managed to right myself and jump off and out. I hit the ground at the same time as the platform, only a few feet away.

"Nhadala!" Benzo yelled, throwing the gun at me. I barely caught it and pressed myself against the wall to keep away from the foot and the corkscrew, both barrels blazing as I shot round after round into the machine. But it was still getting closer.

Over the din, I could just hear the interpreter shouting in Al Bhed. "This isn't working! We need to find another way to get at it!"

I was breathing hard, still sore from all the bruises I'd gotten the night before. Man, two scrapes with huge hulking threats in one day was just too much. Why had I bothered getting up? I could still be back at camp, lounging around like the big boss woman, chatting with Reppi-  
--and then it hit me. This was one of the guard machina she'd been talking about. What had she said? Use electric attacks and steal its engine. Gotcha.

"Benzo!" I called back. "Distract it for a second!"

"What are you going to do?!"

"Probably get my ass killed." I ducked under the corkscrew and got behind the machina at the same time as he ran out in front of it. The zipper stuck on my gear bag, but in a few seconds I had the grid out and I was flipping back into my own blitz uniform. Then I flung the garment grid at Benzo and yelled, "Quick! Go back into Alchemist and mix up something that'll create an electrical charge!"

"Wha--?"

"Don't ask questions, just do it!" I bellowed at him. Then I jumped as hard as I could and landed on the back of the machine. My feet were kicking right on top of the corkscrews until I managed to find footholds. When I was clinging onto the mech's torso with both arms in a bear hug, I tried to think logically. I knew where the engines were located now in the transportation mechs Gippal had sent us to find. The most important part would be in the central area with the best defense. And that meant that my arms were wrapped around the thing right now.

Man, talk about stupid, arrogant things to do.

There was one flash of light and then another, and then I felt a white-hot blast of electricity. "Without killing me!" I screamed as both my feet fell and one of my arms slipped from the machina's torso. Stars were flashing in my eyes. My left foot connected with the corkscrew and barely held as it shot out, giving me just enough time to grab the machine again before I fell.

Now I had a problem--how was I going to get the engine out of the machine without falling? The entire center of the body couldn't be the engine--it must be inside. There were no panels on the back-- the thing was continuous sheet metal, which struck me as really odd. On the front, though, my fingers felt the ridge in the machine where a panel must be bolted on somehow, and I was sure the engine had to be there. Slowly, still hugging the machina, I hooked my right ankle around the platform pole as it rose and spun myself around to the front. Once I was there, I found the panel and felt my heart sink as I realized it was bolted. At all four corners.

A sudden electric blast glancing off the corkscrew right near my right foot reminded me Benzo was there and nearly made me fall again. If I didn't do this quickly he'd electrocute me. "Benzo, gimme the garment grid again!" I called, wrapping my legs around the torso too and reaching out with one arm. I wasn't sure if I could switch dress spheres without letting go of my hold on the machine, but I was about to find out. I found the Warrior sphere in my bag and jammed my hand on it.

My free hand curled around the hilt of a sword and I hissed. Miyu's armor was metal. That would make it even worse for me. Benzo couldn't attack the machine effectively without using lightning, and if he stopped attacking it it would turn on me. But if he shocked it again, the metal would connect and probably hurt me even worse. I had to do this right away if I wanted to live. Carefully, I tightened my legs around the machine--as a female and a forward, my strength has always been in my legs--and freed both arms so I could pry the panel off with the edge of the sword.

When it had clattered to the ground, I switched back into my own Thief form, wrapped both hands around whatever it was inside that compartment, and yanked.

I fell backwards, taking the hunk of metal with me. Landing flat on my back on the ground, I watched as the machina leg ground to the top of its cycle, poised to flatten me--and suddenly exploded.  
For several seconds, I was still breathing too hard to speak.

"Well," Benzo said brightly, "all's well that ends well," and he continued down the tunnel.

* * *

The place was starting to feel like the Via Purifico all over again by the time I finally got to my feet, brushed myself off, and started walking again. If the claustrophobic corridor hadn't opened up only a few minutes later, I might have called the whole thing off and told the Cactaurs to take their cave and cram it. "This better be worth it," I griped once every four or five seconds to Benzo. He just smiled benignly. Sensing that any abuse I could think of would fall on deaf ears, I shut up.

We were moving toward a source of light. By that point, even this pissed me off, because I figured it had been some crazy Cactuar prank to trick the stupid humans into walking through a tunnel and nearly getting killed while Marnela...I dunno, made prank calls on our commsphere. As we got closer, though, we realized that the light wasn't coming from the sun. It was artificial.

The cave we ended up standing in was about the size of four of our big tents arranged in a rough rectangle. There were electric lights lining the walls, but that wasn't the first thing that hit us. The place was crammed with machina.

"Oh, wow," Benzo breathed, wandering slowly over to a large airfan.  
"What is this place?" I asked him.

He turned to look at me though the isolation suit. "This is the nucleus of the Al Bhed testing grounds. I'd always heard rumors about it, but I never thought it actually existed. The story goes that about twenty years ago, our top engineers established this secret lab somewhere on the island where they weren't just restoring machina, but actually creating it. Remember, back then the Yevonites were arresting anyone who was doing machina research. Those guys didn't care if the maesters got hold of the subs and innocuous things they were looking at, because they knew they wouldn't use them, but they knew they'd be killed and their ideas stolen if that lab was found. For years, crackpots have thought it was hidden somewhere in the Oasis or just offshore. Who knew it was right under their noses the whole time?"

I'd stopped listening after the first sentence or so and shrugged. I was wandering the long lines of machina. Twenty years. I'd still been playing with blocks, and people here had been coming up with things that had defined my life. Construction equipment. Pumps for desalinating ocean water. Automatic cleaning machina. And then, at the end of a row, I saw one of the water pumps hooked up to a specially-designed plant box. It was the system I'd used for my hydroponic garden.

"Take that, you Moonflow-sucking losers," I muttered to the Yevonites at large. "This is what science can do. Grow tropical plants in straight water in the middle of a desert. And you guys were using, what, handmade wood rakes?"

"Look, Nhadala," Benzo called from behind me. My Yevonite-bashing reverie went poof. "They have the names of the inventors on them. They're prototypes! They should be in a museum."

"Yeah?" I didn't care all that much, but I idly leaned over and craned my neck up to glance at the underbelly of the machina box that held the plants and the water-distribution mechanism. There was a small panel there, with simple block letters etched into the metal. "Brought forth from the crypt of the ages by Merko."

My father. 


	17. Immortal Soul

Disclaimer: Final Fantasy X, Final Fantasy X-2, Spira, blitzball, and all related characters and locations are owned by Squaresoft, with the exception of a few original characters who will be noted as such. This is a work of fanfiction, meaning that it is both created by a fan for no purpose other than entertainment, and it is fiction, meaning that all characters and events are purely fictonal and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Hey, a question: I was using the brilliant Al Bhed translating program Bikanel for Al Bhed dialogue, and it was deleted from my old computer. The website no longer seems to work. Does anyone know where I can get a copy these days?Oh, yeah. And please don't sue me.  
  
Author's Note: The narrator of this story is Al Bhed, and some dialogue and idiomatic phrases have not been translated into English. Translations of all Al Bhed phrases can be found at the end of the chapter in which they appear.  
  
Green Eyes Plays Dress-Up

by flame mage  
  
spherechange 17: Immortal Soul

* * *

I took the hover out alone that night. It was a stupid thing to do--after what had happened just that morning, I should have known better than to be in the desert alone. But I had to be by myself for a while; I had to get away from all the people and the noise and the activity in that camp.Maybe I just went kinda crazy. I got along okay with the diggers and the camp officers, but I was worried that if I hung around any of them too long, I'd blow my cover--especially Reppi, as much as I woulda killed to talk to her. The only one who didn't know anything about blitz was Benzo, and I'd been spending every waking hour with him and I needed to talk to someone, anyone else. And so I left a sphere for him telling him where I'd gone next to his bed and took off. As far as I could tell, no one even noticed that I was leaving.If you'd asked me, I couldn't have told you where I was going, but subconsciously I must have known I'd go back to that cave. I must have known that something would push me inside and make me wander like a madwoman for hours among the things my father had built with his own hands.I realized that my father's hands were one of the only things I could remember about him. Most Al Bhed wear gloves, but I'd never seen him with any. His hands were always calloused all over, palms, fingertips and everything, like someone who worked with them a lot. Now that I looked at the machina, I could see those hands more clearly in my mind and imagine how he must have built the things in front of me and how they had changed him.There was--there were just too many things I were remembering now. Back home, I could have gotten up and talked to any of my friends--Miyu, Rin, any of the guys on the team. At Home a couple years ago, or even back in our hut in Besaid, Naaga and I could have curled up in our zysseac with some of her health food or even--sacrelige!--a box of pizza and chatted all night. In Luca, Bick would've gotten up and made some tea, and he would have read something funny in the tea leaves to make me laugh, and then he'd just let me vent, or we'd argue about something stupid, or----I wanted to go home.And there was only one person on this entire damn sandblasted island who I could trust not to tell anyone anything Isaid, and that was only because no one would understand her even if she did because she was a damn PLANT.I fired up the hover and headed to the Cactuar Nation.

* * *

I got out of the hover and couldn't hear a sound. Even the breeze was still. Nothing was moving except a thin cloud of green mist swirling around one of the cacti on the far side of the Nation. Marnela."Don't you ever sleep?" I asked quietly as I came around from behind her. She chittered a long response. I was lost."I don't get a word of what you're saying," I told her. "Without Benzo here to translate, I'm pretty useless. But..." For just a sec, I felt stupid asking this question to a cactus--back when I was growing my own hydroponic plants, I'd talked at them sometimes, but I'd never really had a conversation with them. But I needed to talk to someone, and it wasn't like Marnela was gonna tell anyone the dirty secrets about my checkered past. "...is it okay if I talk for a while?"She chittered something that sounded like a yes (although for all I knew, it could have been a "You stupid Al Bhed poser, why would I want to listen to any crap you have to say?"), and so I sat down in the cool sand next to her and started to talk. In my own language."I found something in the desert today, where that Cactuar told us to look," I began. "It was a stockpile of machina. Not ones we salvaged, ones we built. Even today it's hard for us to do that--I don't think anyone knew that there were researchers trying years ago. And my dad, Merko...he was one of them."I looked at Marnela. She was a huge cactus, towering over me by several feet, and she looked strong and deep green. "You're hundreds of years old, though, aren't you?" I asked. She replied with something that sounded kinda like a yes. "So you've been here a lot longer than the Al Bhed have. Had. We only came to Bikanel after Sin destroyed our old Home. For you it was probably like yesterday--not even fifty years. Even my parents weren't born here. The Al Bhed were all over Spira before Cid brought them back together here. It was like it is today. Everyone separated, with no real group identity, no place to belong. Just kinda drifting."You remember when Home was destroyed?" Chitter. "Yeah, I guess you would. They say you could see the smoke all the way across the ocean. And the explosion--I saw the hole."It just pisses me off." I was cracking my knuckles now. Oh, well. Treatment for carpal tunnel syndrome was probably cheaper than therapy. "All the people who died--for what? Why did the Guado kill them? Just for the stupid summoners? The one who brought the Calm wasn't even there. Why should they care if we were trying to protect the others? Letting them go woudn't have solved anything anyway! We learned that straight from Mika! The people that were killed were the little kids, the old people, the scientists who were working there--people who didn't deserve to die! And the Guado killed them all for nothing! And now I'm stuck here digging up the work my people did so I can sell it to the damn Yevonites so they can kill even more of us! With our own weapons! It makes me so sick!" A pocket of mist shot up around a cactus a few feet away. I'd been yelling loud enough to wake it up.I was breathing hard and my knuckles hurt. I sighed and did Rin's trick--count to ten, two deep breaths--and tried to calm down enough to keep going."And all those machina parts all over the desert--those make me mad too. It was just such a waste, Marnela. All the stuff out there we could have repaired, all the new stuff we could have built, all the ways we could have improved Spira. They took it all away from us."Marnela said something that sounded like a question. What question? Who knew?"And that stuff out there, with my dad's name on it--there was this hydroponics system, but there were a bunch of other things, too. Lighting. Engines. He made all these things that I grew up with, and no one ever told me."I flopped back in the sand and stared up at the sky. "I don't remember him all that well. I mean, I was ten when Sin killed him, so I should remember him, but I don't. My mom is the one I always think of, and he was just always in the background. She was loud, she was alive, she was this huge presence--not that she was around so much, but she was the one who got drunk and screamed for hours about how I was the worst thing that had ever happened to her. She was the one that was always trying to make me be what she wanted me to be. And my dad...I don't think I ever really knew him. I can't even remember his face. I've got this one sphere Rin gave me, and as soon as I stop looking at it, I forget what he looked like again."I just remember--he never seemed to get angry with Mom. I hated her, growing up, but Dad...Rin, too. Maybe there was no way to win with her. But it wasn't like she was winning either. She was just making everyone lose."I sighed. "Why can't I remember more?""Maybe you need something to remind you," Benzo said.I jumped. He was standing next to Marnela, watching me. "How long have you been there?!" I demanded."I just got here. I got your sphere and thought you might come to the Nation," he replied. "Nhadala, if you don't mind my asking...you haven't seen the place where Home was yet, have you?" I shook my head. "Do you want to?""You know where it is?" I asked."Yes. Well, we had people guarding the crater for a long time--they didn't leave until after Sin was gone. They marked the spot in case the sand eroded, but they didn't really need to. I don't think that hole will ever go away."Marnela said something and Benzo picked up the translation. "'Perhaps you should go see it, Nhadala,' she says. 'It may help you recover some old memories.'"I looked at Benzo. "Can you take me there?"He started for the hover. "Let's go."

* * *

"Calm down," he told me for the tenth time a few minutes later. I was in the passenger's seat, cracking my knuckles and staring down at the sandy wasteland like my life depended on finding a needle in that haystack. I couldn't sit still."I can't, Benzo, okay?! I can't!"He looked over at me appraisingly as he brought us down a little. "I forgot. Everyone who was at the camp before you got there has already been here so many times. You haven't seen it since...""Since it was destroyed," I replied flatly."You--you were there?""I showed up just after it was hit. I was on the airship, though."  
He shook his head and looked away at the sand on the other side. "I was in Guadosalam, working as a translator for one of Seymour's aides, Tromell. It was the only time I'd ever left the desert. When I heard, I didn't have anywhere to go, so I just stayed. I was there until Sin was destroyed. I...I can't even imagine--""You kept working for the Guado?!" I snapped."Yes," he replied in surprise. "I just told you that. Why?""But the Guado are our enemies!""Nhadala," he said gently. "...look...it was two years ago. The people who ordered the attack are out of power now. Sooner or later you have to forgive and forget.""How can you say that?! They destroyed Home, Benzo! Or did you just forget about all those people they killed?""I'm just saying that the Guado as a race aren't inherently evil, any more than the Al Bhed or the Ronso or the Yevonite humans are. You can't blame the actions of a few people--who, admittedly, did terrible things--on an entire race.""If it was just a couple people, then who the hell were all the guardians running around controlling fiends and killing people inside?!"Benzo shrugged helplessly. "Sometimes people who really aren't bad will do bad things if they think it's for a good cause. The Guado were convinced that they were just doing what was right for Spira in trying to free the summoners so they could fight Sin."I stared at him. "I can't believe you!"He sighed. "I'm sorry, Nhadala. As an interpreter, I work with all kinds of people, so it's hard to hate anyone for long." I didn't say anything. We sat in hostile silence for the next twenty minutes.  
"There it is," he said finally, slowing and taking the altitude down suddenly. "Home." I would have seen it right away anyway; a hole in the ground five times the size of the Luca blitz sphere is pretty hard to miss.Benzo took us down a little jerkily. I was out of the hover and running even before we hit the ground. Of course. I remembered this place. Once upon a time, it had been a small valley. I laughed, that bitter barking sound again. It was a pretty big valley now.The crater was deserted. Not a single fiend in sight. All around, there were still chunks of charred metal, but there was nothing but sand in the pit.Even after all this time, it still smelled like smoke.For some reason, I felt hesitant. I sat down on the edge of the crater like it was just another sphere pool and pushed off until I slid down the slope all the way to the bottom, in the very center of the crater.  
The heart of the central tower of Home. I was standing in what used to be the Summoner's Sanctum.And then there was everything above it. The nerve center of the Home complex--what would have been the square in Luca. The school. The Travel Agency's main office. Our blitz sphere. The main power generators. Shops. Restaurants. Everything we needed to keep our city in the desert running.Most of the big rocks in the immediate area had been blown up, too, but from the one left in the distance I got my bearings and started making my way up the slope. It was so steep that I about halfway up I had to go down on my hands and knees and sink my limbs into the sand to keep going. But the rock told me that I was crawling up the street I ratted on for years while I was learning to blitz. To my left and right were all the back alleys my friends and I had practiced in when we were kids.I closed my eyes, and for a second I could forget that I was knee-deep in sand and see myself back there again. The guys were yelling as I snagged the pass out of thin air as it shot toward the goal (the base of the tower I lived in). I could almost feel Wamkytec bowling me over with a mean tackle (ever wonder why so many street rats go pro? Because after you've been slammed with 200 pounds of muscle on dry land, doing it underwater is a cinch), but I just managed to hang onto the ball and focused hard on the Nap Shot 3 I was about to send rattling against the tower. I reared back and kicked it with all my strength. Keyakku lunged and scraped pavement, and the ball hurtled on straight for Iren, the goalie. There was no way she'd stop it. Fifteen feet--ten--five----and then I remembered. The fires in this street. Wamkytec lying in a pile of bodies in the Summoner's Sanctum. Keyakku dead in the burning metallic central square. Iren--she had probably died too. Were Keyakku and Iren fiends here now? Even our goals, which we'd thought would be there forever, had been gone for two years. And I was sprawled facedown with my hands and knees plunged into the sand.I kept going.Up the slope led down the street, and maybe two-thirds of the way out of the crater--I wasn't sure, but it looked right. I was kneeling in the lobby of my tower, where our apartment had been. Sixteen stories up. I'd lived in that apartment for twenty years.Marnela had been right. Memories were flooding me again. Pushing Naaga under my bed, the two of us lying there in the dark, afraid to even breathe in case the bill collectors heard us and knew we were home. Her sitting on her bed, wrapped around a pillow, stuffing her face with low-fat chocolates and bawling over a romance movie on the sphere. Me checking up on my beloved tomatoes and then, after Naaga insisted I grow some, the flowers. The day the two of us redid the place, changing up all our sheets and trying to install colored lighting so we felt like we were in the middle of the ocean. Rin when he had a makeshift cot by the door, telling us stories late at night when we couldn't sleep and then tucking us into bed. The three of us eating dinner one night when I tried so hard to cook it and burned it, and him eating it anyway. Watching the Psyches matches onsphere. The day we were watching a game and the announcer interrupted it to tell us a new Calm had begun. Naaga and I holding each other two weeks before that when they told us that Mom and Dad were dead, and her sobbing and me just standing there, not feeling anything at all.  
And then before that. The day the two of them left, with Dad carrying all the suitcases and Mom almost forgetting to kiss us goodbye. Mom stumbling home drunk--a lot of those memories. Rin helping her through the door, thinking we were asleep. Her screaming at the sphere when the Psyches were losing. Me scrambling up onto her lap--rarely--when she told me I'd better be a blitz ace. Dad cooking dinner. Dad futzing with a new little circuit box and spreading the parts out in a mess all over the kitchen table so we couldn't eat there for three weeks until he finished it. His face as he brushed my hair for school.That was right. He'd always been the one who got us ready. Mom was usually either AWOL or drunk or just too uninterested to do it. He'd bought our clothes, too--usually just a little off from what the other kids were wearing, but the right sizes. Naaga always knew which presents were from Mom on her birthday when they were burgundy-colored and flashy, and two sizes off. Mom never bothered to get me clothes; she always bought me a blitzball. Every year.I remembered.Slowly, I crawled the rest of the way up the slope until I could stand and brush myself off. Benzo, who had been a ways off looking at some burnt piece of metal or other, turned around. "Hey, Nhadala, I found something," he called."What?" I called back."Another sphere." He tossed it to me; I caught it automatically."Anything else here?" I asked.He shook his head. "Pretty much everything was obliterated. A few hunks of junk like this, but they're such a wreck that they won't be good for much. And if you saw it, you know...well, there aren't any bodies, any personal things, anything like that left. Just big chunks of buildings.""You ready to go then?""Are you?" he asked.I took a deep breath and nodded. "Yeah. I--it brought back a lot of memories. I don't know what else there is to do here.""All right, then." He turned and started walking toward the hover. "Let's get back and get some rest then, okay? No more night wanderings for a while. We've got digging to do."I started to say something about what the digging was doing to put weapons in the hands of filth like the Guado, but then I looked back at the crater and I just couldn't. I was angry about what the Guado had done here, but Home--it wasn't a battlefield anymore. It was a graveyard.I took one last look and started walking. 


End file.
